Get Pinning! Why Every Writer Needs a Pinterest Board

I used to collect cuttings: articles from newspapers, quotations, photographs, anything that I thought might come in useful at a later date when I needed to find inspiration for my writing. I even had a neatly labelled box file to keep them all in.

The snag was that I never did get round to using my wonderful cache of resources. Inevitably, I would be sorting out my study six years later and come across a heap of cuttings that were out of date, dog-eared and yellowed. By that stage they would only be fit for the bin.

Then I discovered Pinterest. You may have come across it. You can get it free as an app for your tablet or phone or Google it and put it on your computer. Goodbye, piles of yellowing newspaper cuttings. Hello, beautiful, colourful, space saving board of inspiration and information.

So what do I like about having Pinterest? And why should every writer have a Pinterest board?

First of all, even if you aren’t at all artistic, you can make your Pinterest board a colourful, attractive and varied smorgasboard of prompts and stimuli. You don’t even have to arrange them on a page. Just click on the Pin that you like and it will automatically be attached and positioned on a board of your choice. No messy Pritt Stick or blunt pair of scissors required.

It’s great for saving pictures that you come across and think, “That would be a really interesting photo to write a story about.” At the moment, I have at the top of my Writing Board a beautiful, atmospheric photo of a tree in the fall, rich red leaves against a misty autumnal backdrop; a picture of Halstatt Market; and a nocturnal photo of the iron gate of a Cambridge college. Any one of them could serve as a prompt for a piece of writing.

There are lots more prompts too, written ones, displayed in text or handwriting against a coloured background or a complementary photograph. Here are a few examples:

        “And suddenly you were my everything.”

        “There was a list of things that could have gone wrong that day, but being shoved down the laundry chute was not on it.”

        “Someone drops their wallet on the street. You pick it up and are about to return it, but then you see it contains a surprising photograph... of you...”

        You can also collect inspiring quotations about writing, such as these:

        “You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.”

                                        ANNIE PROULX

And how about this one as an antidote to General Election madness?

“less selfies,

more books.”

Or this piece of advice from Frank McCourt?

        “Keep scribbling! Something will happen.”

But Pinterest can also provide you with links to more substantial resources – articles on aspects of writing, podcasts, even videos. A veritable treasure trove!

If by now you are wondering what you are missing, why not take a look at Gale Barker’s Writing Board? To see more than the first few items, you will need to register with Pinterest, but it’s free. Even if that is the only board you look at, it will keep you busy for a while, as so far I have collected more than two and a half thousand pins!

Feel free to borrow some of mine. Before you know it, you will be starting your own collection of inspirational material – and there won’t be a single tatty box file or pile of yellowed cuttings in sight!

Happy pinning!

Gale Barker