The obsession archive

Welcome to Through Lines! Living creatively, thinking imaginatively, practicing the craft of storytelling, and uncovering your invisible strings

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In writing, some ideas arrive like lightning. They’re sudden, electric, and impossible to ignore. Others drift in like the mist of a sleepy seaside town—soft, steady, and omnipresent, lingering in the air for as long as you can remember.

There are themes that have been with me since I was a teenager, though I didn’t recognize them as themes when I was younger. They felt more like fixations or fascinations. It wasn’t until I was an adult, brainstorming story ideas for my own work, that I realized what they were: not fleeting, but foundational. The concepts, images, questions, and touch points that had been quietly shaping my worldview all along.

Now that my attention has turned toward writing horror specifically (one short story I’m polishing now and one novel in the works, both circling the themes of shadows from childhood, demonic possession, and female friendship) I see the throughlines even more clearly. The things that won’t let go.

As a children’s book agent, I see this, too. What compels a writer is rarely random. Often, before the plot is fully formed, there’s a current underneath that’s been building for years. When I read a manuscript that crackles with energy, it’s usually because the writer has found their way back to something deeply personal. Some of the best stories don’t start with a premise—they start with a haunting.

So I started doing a creative exercise that’s turned out to be both grounding and inspiring. I call it an obsession archive—a running list of the things I keep returning to in my brain and heart, whether I want to or not.

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Some items, both broad and specific, in my archive are:

• Ghosts, real and metaphorical

• Abandoned places

• Cats and companionship

• Art made out of isolation

• Final Girls

• The darkest humor

• Crushes

• Tweenage sleepover games and what they say about girlhood

• The architecture of intentional joy

• Storytelling as survival, personally and collectively

My favorite abandoned place

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Build Your Own Obsession Archive

If you want to try this, here’s a simple, no-pressure structure:

1. Make a list of anything that’s been tapping you on the shoulder lately. Words, themes, topics, places, memories, aesthetics. Be as specific or strange as you like.

2. Group them loosely. You can use categories like Themes, Topics, Places, Objects—or invent your own. It doesn’t have to be tidy. Just start noticing what keeps showing up.

3. Use it. When you’re stuck creatively, come back to this list. When something new starts circling you, add it in. This becomes a kind of inner map—a reminder that you’re already full of material. You're already interesting. You’re already in conversation with something.

Creativity doesn’t always require a new idea. Sometimes it just requires naming what’s already quietly obsessed with you.

Let it haunt you. Let it guide you.

And if you do try it—I'd love to know what's on your list.

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