I like that. Yeah, I think that you're right in that keeping track of the ideas is the important part of the question. One thing I've been noticing recently is that older ideas are kind of percolating through to stuff I've been producing lately. I'll write something and then get the feeling I've experienced it before. Then, I'll go digging and find that what I've written is kind of an expansion or a different point of view of something I've worked on previously.

Honestly, your technique is something that I paid a whole lot of money to learn in university. Speaking only from my own experience, there is no magic equation. I am shocked at the people I know from college who have gone on to be successful and respected. Shit, even revered. My good friend who was in the creative writing program with me started shacking up with a girl who reminded me so much of a cow in looks and mannerisms, not to mention intellect. I wake up one day a few years back, to find that she's involved with a big project involving the arts and the internet and co-founded by an influential magazine. She's done interviews and been given awards and a bunch of other shit that makes people who don't know her think she's hip, cool and smart. My point is, part of the right to pontificate is perception. Case in point: you've got a whole website dedicated to your words and writing credits. Me? I'm just some dude on the internet.

And yes, that's exactly what I meant, about angels and the flaccid pen. During a discussion about this very thing with my advisor in university, he told me that sometimes you have a great idea for a poem and that's all it is. You get an idea of what the product will be like and have a vague idea of how to accomplish it and it just turns into nothing. Sometimes the thing to do, according to him, is to let the idea stay there on the edge, while you begin writing about it. That is, realizing things on paper while holding a thought at arm's length might often work better.