The JumpStart Jar that started it all! This jar includes over 2,100 different nouns, verbs, modifiers, and provacative phrases to use in hundreds of different ways

Background

While reading poemcrazy: freeing your life with words by Susan Wooldrige (Three Rivers Press 1997), I became enchanted with her chapter about word tickets. I went out to OfficeMax and bought a roll of them and began writing my own words on them... but the tickets were small and my handwriting too hard to read, so I began collecting words by cutting them out of newspapers and magazines and gluing them to the tickets. I added in provacative phrases, and in no time at all, I had filled an old Reebok shoe box full of tickets took them to a writing class and they became an immediate hit.

I went out on ebay and found a buisness that sold rolls of tickets in many colors, so I bought them as well and continued to glue words onto them with no rhyme or reason, and soon had over 10,000 tickets in several large clear containers purchased at the Container Store.

Once upon a time there was a writer who was struggling with a project. In order to inspire his thoughts & inject some creativity into his work he devised a strategy: create a series of random words & pick one. Write whatever came to mind. It worked! He shared his success with other writers who asked for copies of his idea.

Thus the JumpStart Jar was conceived.

Writers, Teachers, Students, Designers, Artists, Moms, Marketers, Poets, Screenwriters, Retirees, Publishers, Lawyers, Screenwriters, Accountants, Soccer Moms, NASCAR Dads, Children, Grown-Ups, Sales Representatives, Scrapbookers, Librarians, Grandparents, Essayists, Apprentices, Professors, Masters, eBayers, Customer Service Workers, Journalists, Government Officials, Public Relations Professionals, Volunteers, Administrators, Graduate Students, Politicians, Gurus, Ministers, Dads, Short Story Writers, Foreign Exchange Students, Dog Trainers, Astronomers, Actors, Dentists, Football Players, Webmasters, Directors, Pilots, Technical Writers, Managers, Basketweavers, Cynics, Physicists, Believers, Experts, Specialists, Doctors, Copywriters, Inventors, Clock Winders, Bloggers, Waitresses, Graphic Artists, Instructors, Producers, Computer Geeks, Book Lovers, and many, many more!

Anyone can find uses for the JumpStart Jar!

Fabulous Fiction

The Fabulous Fiction JJ is a bit different than other JJs. You can pull out a ticket and decide the best way to approach the story. Maybe you just want to have an interesting antagonist for your hero, so you pull out a magenta Character ticket. Or you are not sure what your character wants, so pull a green motivation ticket. Maybe you want to create an entirely new story from scratch, so you pick out a character, situation, complication, motivation and a first line ticket to get that story started. Sometimes these combinations don't work. That's OK, toss the tickets that don't fit back into the jar and try again. The combinations that you pull out of this jar will sometimes stretch the limits of realistic story telling, so do what makes logical sense for the story. Don't let the JJ block the natural connections that may occur as the result of the random stimuli provided by the JJ.

Brainstorming Boost #1