I’m a huge fan of notebooks.
It’s a rare moment that I’m more than 20 feet away from a 5″ x 7″ Mead notebook. For those times I am without a notebook, I have my iPhone.
As big a fan of being able to catch thoughts as they come to me, I don’t have a notebook on my nightstand, even though some of my biggest ideas come to me at night before falling asleep.
What I Do with Notebooks
I love being able to jot down ideas for promoting my writing. More than a few Juggling Writer entries started in a notebook. I take notes when I get together with two friends for our writing group. One of my favorite things in the world is going to get coffee with my wife and chatting about ideas for our blogs.
But I rarely write down story ideas.
Story Ideas are Different (For Me)
While I know I’ve lost a good short story or two in my time by not jotting down story ideas in notebooks, it’s a fair tradeoff for letting bigger things bubble up in my mind.
If I have a big enough idea for something as I’m nodding off for the night, I get up and start working on it. Or I spend an hour or so somewhere between waking and sleeping thinking about it enough that if it really is that big, it’s still there in the morning.
Knowing that I’ll die with a head full of ideas, to try capturing every single thing — for me — would take up too much time. And it would be easy to start things I never finish.
If it stays in my mind — if it’s something that excites me enough to remember the next morning, at work, and while eating dinner — I know it’s something that I’m more likely to start and finish.
Eventually, I capture all the little things that make up a novel in notebooks, but for the initial ideas, it’s all in my head.
How about You?
Do you write down every idea that comes your way, or do you let things slide in an effort to catch the things that really excite you?
I keep notebooks (journals, I call them). 8.5×11, spiral bound, with some college logo on the front cover. I jot down story ideas, research, bits of narrative I’m trying out, things that please or infuriate me, things that puzzle me, anecdotes of my day. The trouble is, I have nearly 30 of these journals now, and if I ever wanted to go back and find some specific item, I doubt that I could.
I’ve found that I make fewer entries these days in my paper journal. In part that’s due to keeping a blog, where such entries now go rather than in the journal where they would have gone in the past. I also put most of my story-related stuff (notes, narrative, research) in files on my computer. I can file and compartmentalize them better there. Also, about a year ago, my son told me that he can’t wait to read my journals some day. This has made me self censor, which is a shame, I guess.
Still, in whatever form, I’m a note taker/maker, and often when I’m away from my computer or journal, I will scribble my notes on a sheet of paper to transcribe later.
I’ve experienced that same “lost” idea many times. I’ve found, though, that they tend to come back to me later, which may be the same thing as your idea that the good ideas linger.
Paul: I’ve kept plenty of paper journals. Then I started using LiveJournal and exporting my entries here and there so I had a digital copy. But there really is something nice about a paper journal; I’ve thought about keeping one again.
I have a sketchbook for design ideas, notebooks for WordPress/Web stuff, and all the little Mead spiral notebooks scattered about. I’ve used Google Docs for a few years, and in the last year or so, I’ve also started using Evernote. (I’ll eventually get around to doing an entry about how I use Evernote.)
Maybe it’s because I’m most used to it, but I really find the best way for me to capture ideas is in a paper notebook (or typing on an actual keyboard–not on my iPhone).
And I’ve also lost ideas, only to have them come back. There have been quite a few mornings when I’ve been driving to work, chastising myself for not keeping a notebook on my nightstand, only to have the ideas come rushing back. (And then I find a spot to pull over and actually capture the ideas in the little notebook I keep in the car for moments like that.)
My wife is a much better organizer than I am. I see the way she has things organized on her computer and I’m amazed. I try to mimic what she does, but never have luck. I think I created a [very structured] monster when I introduced her to Evernote. Since she started using it and I’ve seen what she does, I’ve been using it better. For me, I’m not sure if there’s anything better to organize all those bits of dialogue, research notes, photos, and other things accumulated along the way to a finished novel.
I do keep notebooks all around the house, along with random pens garnered from bank tellers, career fairs, and the deli mart. Before I sit down to read or daydream, I ensure that I have notebook + pen + post-it notes + perfect reading light. All of these items inspire my muse.
Yes – I do tend to write ideas down as soon as they pop into my head. I am moving away from that practice, though. I figure that the best ideas will still be there the next time I need one.
M.W.: Once the big idea sticks in my head and I know it’s something I’ll write, then I’m nuts with the note, capturing every little thought. I know people who write every story idea down, and it works for them. For me, it’s just that whole bubbling up to the top of my mind thing and then wading into pages of notes.
I love hearing about what works for others. I love looking through the sketchbooks of artist friends; they’re so lucky! Looking through all my notebooks, it’s all this horrible scrawl. It all looks the same and I have to dig to find things (which is why I love Evernote so much–makes finding things much easier).
I’m (still) very disorganized. Instead of using notebooks- of which I have plenty- I write all my ideas and notes-to-self on random scraps of paper, in the margins of catalogs, on envelopes, on whatever happens to be within arm’s-reach at the moment. My husband, on the other hand, is super-duper (OCD) organized. So if it weren’t for him I would wading through random papers all day.
But I am (still) making an effort to get my stuff organized. I know a have a few gems buried in sub-files on my computer, and in my HUGE “Ideas Folder” in a desk drawer. For a naturally disorganized person, organizing is a painstakingly long process. But I’ll get there . .
When I used to work in billing jobs, I used the adding machine tape for notes.
It was great…I could jot down as much as I needed as ideas came and tear it off. I’d get home, empty my pockets, and I had all these great ideas on scraps of paper. Ideas I could never find, even when I had them all together with a binder clip. (Usually, though, they were all over the desk, driving my very organized wife mad!)
I still jot temporary ideas down on whatever is within arm’s reach. By that, I mean if I’m working on a blog entry I know will be done in a sitting, I scrawl whatever I need on whatever is close and when I’m done, it’s shredded and recycled. But I’m finally getting better thanks to Evernote!