Use a notebook to make a quick note, preserve ideas or thoughts, and record tidbits of information while they are fresh. With a notebook handy, ideas won’t dissolve into the air never to return. Here are a few tips on how writers can use a notebook as a valuable tool to write better fiction and nonfiction.
Writers Find Notebook a Valuable Tool
Writers, such as Sue Grafton, Katherine Towler, Suzy Kline, James Michner, Cathy Lamb, and others make regular use of notebooks to capture ideas, and thoughts for use when they write. Using a notebook may not make you a blockbuster author, or guarantee publication of your work, but if these famous authors are an indication, using a notebook might improve your writing.
How to Write Better Fiction and Nonfiction Using a Notebook
I’m on a walk. As I pass by a clump of bushes, I notice a passage through the thick foliage. In the shadows, as far back as I can see, is a lump of cloth. Cast off clothing. But. What if instead of a discarded shirt, it was a shirt still in use by a now dead body. How long would it have been before anyone discovered it? I take out my notebook and make a quick sketch, a few notes, and I have a potential body drop for my next mystery.
At the store, I overhear a couple discussing a can of product she is holding in her hand. I stop, and listen to their conversation. I know, you shouldn’t listen to other people’s conversations, but as a commercial writer...candid consumer comments about a product can be gold. Some of their observations, likes, and dislikes may solve a problem that one of my clients is having with sales on another product. I whip out my notebook and, unobtrusively of course, jot down quotes, key issues, phrases, whatever strikes me at the time might be important someday in a marketing campaign or advertisement.
Strolling down the street, I pass a couple looking at a map. They turn it this way and that. I stop to offer assistance. After pointing out the location they are looking for and directing them to their destination, they comment about what they think would be helpful to include on the map. Out comes the notebook; in goes the comment, and another idea that was kindled by their difficulty. Any of the notes might end up as a vignette in a story, in an article like this, or may improve the next map published by one of my clients. Jotting down facts at the time they occur, or immediately afterward, helps to preserve accurately what happened.
Write Better Projects Using a Notebook
When working on a large project, either fiction or nonfiction, I often dedicate a notebook, or notebooks, to the project. I don’t usually carry project notebooks with me everywhere, but if I make notes in my regular notebook that I carry with me about the project, I transfer the information into the project notebook when I get the chance. When I plan on working on my current project, I take that notebook and work in it.
How to Preserve Writing Ideas
Expand on quickly taken notes. After eavesdropping on the couple in the store that I mentioned earlier, I spent a moment and wrote out a clearer explanation of the note I made while the thought was still fresh in my mind. I expanded one of my notes from, “lbl prt 2 sm 2fnt?” into “printing on label too small for older couple to read. Looked like a size 2 font. Keep in mind for product X packaging targeted for older consumers.”
If an idea hits me and I have the time, I sit down wherever I am and write. I may write a page, or ten. Pen in hand, notebook in my lap, or if I’m blessed, on a table or horizontal surface. As long as the words keep flowing, I keep going. Because I know the words will stop coming so easily soon enough.
How to Use a Notebook to Overcome Writer’s Block
A notebook can also be a cure for writer’s block. I open my notebook, and there are ideas out of my own head scribbled throughout, as well as ideas given by others and ideas borrowed from others. If I am working on a project, I flip through the notebook and look for ideas related to the project. If I’m looking for a project to work on, I sift through the notebook and pick out an idea. I write on that idea for awhile, if it fleshes out and keeps going, great, if not, I go back to my notebook and pick another.
This article began as a notation in my notebook, “What would I do without a notebook.” The note was written at the end of a few paragraphs of brilliant draft copy (oxymoron?). Writing out ideas when they pop up can help a writer remember them and expand on them in the moment of discovery. If I record the information immediately, I can preserve the idea and some sense of what was significant about it.
Free to Write and Experiment
If you want to know how to write better fiction and nonfiction, take a cue from writers like Sue Grafton, a notebook can be the source of ideas while writing and the repository of notes, thoughts, facts, figures, dates, times and places. It’s yours. It’s inexpensive and easy. Nobody else needs to see it. Grammar and spelling mean nothing, write in new forms and styles, draw, experiment, the value is of this tool is in the writer’s ability to originate, preserve and retrieve information and ideas.
Jon Thompson - Jon Thompson - freelance article and commercial writer with background in education, business, advertising, sales and emergency ...
