When I sit down to write, the first thing I do is open my spreadsheet. It holds fourteen years’ worth of collected inspiration: 9,131 passages from 382 books, organized into eighteen categories devised with a level of detail that borders on obsessive. What began with the casual habit of highlighting favorite sentences as I read has become an essential—if slightly over-the-top—tool in my writing process.
I did not set out to build the CVS receipt of writing inspiration; the spreadsheet was born of the innocent practice of noting sentences on my Kindle back in 2010. The author described this sensation perfectly, I’d think. Or, Whoa, what an unusual word choice here. I never had a plan for what I’d do with all these passages—maybe my notes were just a way to process what I was reading. I was twenty-two, working in a cupcake bakery in New Zealand and writing a travel blog on the side. Growing up as the daughter of two journalist-turned-author parents, I’d always dreamed of being an author too, but at the time I wasn’t working on any big project or trying to refine my craft. I wasn’t even organizing the sentences yet—they just sat there in my Kindle highlights, little sparks of inspiration saved without a specific purpose. Maybe I just liked knowing they were there, floating above me in the digital cloud.
But then three years ago I sold a memoir based on a proposal and realized I didn’t know the first thing about writing a memoir. Thanks to an essay I’d written about my late-in-life autism diagnosis, the whole deal came together shockingly fast—less than two months from essay to book contract—and I suddenly found myself with a tight deadline and no road map. What was my publisher thinking? I hadn’t majored in creative writing or English lit. I don’t have an MFA, and most writing workshops have left me even more adrift than I’d been before. The advice I found there was often vague—what does “find your voice” even mean?—and the examples the instructors used almost always came from old, dead white men whose work felt completely disconnected from the stories I wanted to write.
So I asked Google: “How do I write a book?” and Google told me repeatedly to “read a lot.” I suppressed the urge to throw my laptop out the window.
Of course I read a lot. I’ve never met a writer who was not at first addicted to books, spending their childhood hunched beneath attic beams injecting Anne of Green Gables straight into their veins. The problem was that I loved reading so much, my mind would immerse itself completely, not registering the mechanics of how a story was constructed. That wasn’t to say I was starting from scratch—I spent a decade as a full-time copywriter, collaborated on a New York Times best-seller, and had a few essays published. But even with that foundation, I didn’t have the tools I craved to tackle something as daunting as a memoir to be published under my own name. Reading so many books didn’t mean I could tell you how their authors wrote them.
As I started drafting my memoir, I became obsessed with the how of it all. How do writers incorporate flashbacks without interrupting the flow of a scene? How do they describe the shape of a person’s nose? How do they weave research or backstory into the narrative while keeping the pace? I understood, theoretically, that I should do things like “reveal my characters through dialogue,” but what I really wanted were seventy-eight specific examples of how such writing was done.
When you’re a copywriter, your “swipe file” is as essential as your portfolio. This curated collection of inspiring marketing copy is designed to spark ideas for new campaigns. At my last job we even had a shared Pinterest board where we saved our favorite ads. We turned to it whenever we hit a creative block. I was still working at that job when I got the book deal, and while drafting my memoir it occurred to me: Couldn’t I do the same with my bloated collection of sentences?
Within five minutes I had exported all 9,131 Kindle highlights. I spent the next few hours happily copying and pasting those sentences into a spreadsheet. What started as a simple exercise in organization quickly spiraled into a full-blown passion project. I began with basic categories like Dialogue, Summary, and Observation, but soon I was diving into more specific ones—Physical Sensation, Smell, Taste, and Sound—because why not sift through the minutiae of literary craft? As I sorted, patterns started to emerge—the ways authors captured vivid imagery or conveyed emotions with just a few words.
The sea was very close, booming into the ground, more of a sensation than a sound. —Raynor Winn, The Salt Path
At this point Mr. Wormwood came noisily into the room. He was incapable of entering any room quietly, especially at breakfast time. He always had to make his appearance felt immediately by creating a lot of noise and clatter. —Roald Dahl, Matilda
But, of course, it was not enough. A few weeks later I found myself creating a new tab called Funny, then another for First Sentences, and yet another for Character Descriptions. I was finally beginning to grasp the how of it all—how the small, specific choices in a single sentence could build into the larger architecture of a story.
Pink veins made a map of quite a large city on his cheeks; his nose could have hidden successfully in a bowl of strawberries. He wore a ragged jerkin and holey tights with an aplomb that nearly convinced you that his velvet-and-vermine robes were in the wash just at the moment. In one hand he held a towel, with which he had clearly been removing the make-up that still greased his features. —Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters
Turns out the answer to “how to write a book” wasn’t in the sweeping generalizations I’d been given—no one could hand me the blueprint I so desperately wanted. Instead I realized that close reading, one sentence at a time, was the only way forward. And the more I organized, the more I craved. This project was unlocking something I hadn’t even realized I was missing: a way to finally translate the mechanics of great writing into my own work.
I landed on eighteen different categories for sorting my passages. I still haven’t come close to organizing my entire collection, but the act of exploring it has become a ritual as important as my writing. It shaped my memoir, allowing me to chip away at it one sentence at a time, and it has transformed my entire creative life, showing me that I could finish a project this daunting. When I’m stuck on introducing a new character, it helps to skim 137 different ways to describe a person. Or if I know that I want to write about rain and all that’s in my head are clichés, I can search the word rain and see a dozen examples for how a writer can approach the weather, sparking new ideas and opening up possibilities I hadn’t considered.
When I stepped off the porch, the rain on my hat overwhelmed every other sound. —Rhonda Riley, The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope
The rain poured down, so concentrated that it seemed to fall in sheets instead of drops, blurring the edges of the world, turning everything gray and opaque. —Jennifer Weiner, The Breakaway
I cannot imagine a world in which I finished my memoir without this self-made manual. One week, for instance, while struggling with how to summarize great swaths of my life, I realized I needed a way to convey the passage of time. I began scouring my collection for examples. After reviewing a dozen or so passages, I noticed a pattern: Most authors used the weather or chores to move through the years.
Before I knew it, little buds were sprouting from the trees again, the snow slushed into puddles, and suddenly, it was spring. —Courtney Maum, The Year of the Horses
Cherries, cooking, goats, dishes, the past. Days are endless and the weeks fly by. —Ann Patchett, Tom Lake
The more I organized, the more I started to notice these patterns—and not just unspoken rules that many writers seem to instinctively follow, but about the kind of writing I love. For instance, I’ve saved nearly a dozen full paragraphs with long, elaborate descriptions of nature. And it’s hard for me to read a good simile without highlighting it. I love simple language used in new ways. I also love a good teaser.
I remember what happened next with heartbreaking clarity. —Stephen King, Fairy Tale
I’m working on my next book and am still learning new ways to use my spreadsheet. Just last month I discovered a Kindle tool called “Vocabulary Builder.” It had been automatically saving every word I looked up, along with the sentence where it originally appeared. I exported that list into a new Language tab on my spreadsheet, which helps me remember the words and also reminds me how they were used—a much more memorable way to learn than a definition on dictionary.com.
Donella materialized with her diaphanous beauty, and Sidra stiffened. —Rebecca Ross, A River Enchanted
I realize this sounds like a ludicrous way to spend my time (it should surprise no one that I am autistic—we love a good system), but artists have been accumulating inspiration like this for all of time. Ralph Waldo Emerson kept notebooks, many of which included quote collections he would later use in his lectures. Beethoven did the same, copying down by hand his favorite passages from literature and poetry.
My friend Carmel is a writer who has over a dozen journals where she saves her favorite sentences. Before she starts to write, she’ll open a random notebook and read a few just to get her creative juices flowing. Another writer I know, whenever he discovers a sentence he loves, will handwrite it over and over—sometimes hundreds of times—like a kid stuck in detention, convinced that it will somehow be absorbed from his pen into his brain. Some writers use Goodreads or Pinterest to save their favorite quotes. Others think I’m completely unhinged when they hear about my spreadsheet.
But just last week I was skimming through an old book my journalist parents gave me in 1996, when I was nine years old and already dreaming of becoming a writer. The book, A Writer’s Notebook by Ralph Fletcher, encourages young writers to collect writing. “My truest inspiration comes from the poems and paragraphs of real people practicing the writing craft,” he notes. “I’ve learned that if I am going to write well, I need to surround my words with the beautiful writing of others.”
I still have the notebook I bought after reading Fletcher: a navy blue spiral pad the size of my hand, the ink blurred by time and spilled apple juice. Its pages contain the first quotes I ever collected. Nearly three decades later, I’ve moved from the bubblegum handwriting of my childhood to a Google spreadsheet of Kindle highlights. What began as a simple habit evolved into a vital part of my creative process—an ever-growing resource I continue to refine with each new book I read.
With my memoir complete and on shelves, I am honestly most proud of what the spreadsheet taught me. While some argue that imitating the greats can dilute a writer’s voice, calling on a range of examples for instruction only strengthened mine. Each sentence in my collection unlocked a technique that had always felt like an industry secret. And unlike the vague advice to “read a lot,” here was a method that actually worked.
Marian Schembari is the author of the memoir A Little Less Broken: How an Autism Diagnosis Finally Made Me Whole (Flatiron Books, 2024), but her first byline appeared at age eleven in Highlights for Kids. It was for a poem about dragons. Since then, her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, and Good Housekeeping. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and daughter.
