Rest assured, no one is more surprised than me. But I just started messing around on Redplit and now I’ve made an app. This is from the About page.
Shoebox: A Serendipity Engine
My handwriting looks like I’ve just been tortured so I never really fell into the habit of keeping a notebook, and I’ve always envied people who do.
It’s a very good habit to have. We all have ideas we never write down. Half-formed thoughts that nonetheless make you laugh. Images from dreams that won’t go away. Snappy comebacks that came to you just too late. Shoebox is built on the belief that those ideas are worth saving and that something interesting happens when you save enough of them.
The concept is simple. You fill the box with 100 ideas. Any kind of idea. A character. A what-if. A place you passed through once. A premise you thought you’d never use. A phrase that’s been rattling around your head for weeks. The box stays locked until you hit 100. That’s it.
Once you unlock the box, the games begin. Shoebox lets you shuffle, collide, and recombine your ideas in ways you didn’t expect. Connections surface between things you’d forgotten, something stale turns strange again, two unrelated notions suddenly click. That’s the serendipity.
The inspiration comes from Woody Allen, who kept boxes and suitcases and drawers full of scraps. A character note here, a premise there. He would often find a connection between disparate ideas that he could turn into a story, a script and then a film. And from David Lynch, who learned from his teacher Frank Daniel that to make a feature film, you gather ideas, put each one on a 3×5 card, and as soon as you have 70, you have a film.
Another inspiration was James Webb Young’s classic A Technique for Producing Ideas, which argues that creativity isn’t inspiration. It’s collection, combination, and the patient willingness to let things brew.
Restriction is the point. You can’t play until you’ve done the work.
Now do the work.
Hey that's great! 😃 I'm on it and already had one idea. 💡Brilliant!👌99 to go...
This is neat, although to be honest, even though my handwriting is rotten, I keep pads and notebooks. Dozens of them, plus a list of jokes on computer. I'll give it a try still, and thanks a lot for sharing this.