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Tis the season for lists, even for those who aren't naturally checklist and to-do list types. For the holidays, people will make packing lists, shopping lists, cleaning lists, address lists, and wish lists.\n\nLists are useful and practical, but they can serve a far more creative and powerful role in the life of a writer. You may find the humble list becomes the most used tool in your writer\u2019s toolbox.\n\nLet's look at how lists can transform your writing...and your life.\n1. A list is a quick way to generate ideas\nWhether you\u2019re keeping a journal or meeting an article deadline, lists are quick ways to write during busy seasons.\n\n \tMake a list of the big ideas you want to cover in a nonfiction book, and you\u2019ve formed a working Table of Contents.\n \tLists are the basis of roundup articles\u2014a quick and rewarding project for both writer and reader.\n \tList everything you know about a topic or scene you plan to write, and your list establishes what you already know and reveals what you have yet to find out. Thanks to the list, you can plan your research and fill in the gaps.\n \tKeep an ongoing list of article headlines or chapter titles you'd love to tackle someday and you've got an idea bank to draw from when you\u2019re ready for something new. When you have time minutes free, add to the list.\n \tKeep a writer's notebook packed with lists that include descriptions, timelines, character notes, and snatches of dialogue.\n \tMake a list of unfortunate events you can throw at your characters and you'll have the makings of your next novel's plot.\n\n2. A list tricks us into bypassing writer\u2019s block\nLists can help us break free from writer\u2019s block by stripping away a lot of the elements typically expected from a creative project. And the act of list-making is so unassuming, so doable, so quick to pull off, we can bypass the things that hold us back or block us, like fear, lack of ideas, confusion, uncertainty.\n\nStart a list and you almost can\u2019t stop your brain from producing another item and another. The brain loves lists. If you\u2019re stuck, you may find you\u2019re unstuck by the time you scribble the fourth or fifth entry.\n\nYou might as well keep going. Next thing you know, you\u2019ve written the draft or the outline of a poem, essay, short story, or blog post.\n3. A list is flexible\nAs you write, your list expands and contracts to match the evolution of your ideas. As you edit, you can delete or combine items as needed.\n4. A list builds in limits\nWhile allowing for flexibility, lists also form natural boundaries.\n\nIn \u201cA List of Reasons Why Our Brains Love Lists,\u201d Maria Konnikova says the human brain responds to the way a list \u201cspatially organizes the information; and it promises a story that\u2019s finite, whose length has been quantified upfront.\u201d1\n\nIf a single idea seems too convoluted, corral it. Deal with idea-sprawl by cramming it into a list. By defining and limiting our ideas, our writer-minds relax; we don\u2019t have to say it all.\n5. A list instantly organizes our ideas\nWhen I introduced the 6+1 Traits, one of the early traits we must tend to after settling on a solid idea is Organization. How will we organize these concepts or present the stories?\n\nTry a list. It\u2019s a quick tool to organize and contain ideas when you have no idea how to organize or structure your material. Possible forms for your project may reveal themselves in the process of expanding, editing, and ordering the list.\n\nCategorize and group them. Enumerate them. Your reader\u2019s brains, Konnikova writes, \u201clove effortlessly acquired data,\u201d2 and your writer-brain loves structure.\n6. A list is easy to scan\nCopyblogger\u2019s Brian Clark wrote seven reasons why a list post will \u201calways work.\u201d With a list, he says, we promise a \u201cquantifiable return on attention investment.\u201d3 This motivates people to commit.\n\nKonnikova pointed out that by making the process of consuming the content simpler, tidier, categorizing and grouping information in clumps and marking each sectio...