Juiced On Writing

Not to be confused with a journal – which I tend to keep electronically – I have a series of physical writing notebooks. And a strange but simple system of colour-coding to let me have at least a small chance of finding that interesting idea I know I wrote down a few months ago, or that haiku I played with in the dentist’s waiting room.

Here below is a detailed look into my own writing notebooks and the systems I use for a productive and disciplined approach to something which is, actually quite fun – keeping a writer’s notebook.

1. Between a Journal and a Notebook, a Creative Journal and a Diary

Firstly, it took me some time to work out the differences between various notebooks and books, and understanding my own needs. But my biggest goals of 2009 are towards becoming more productive and disciplined in my writing, and yet with a converse value of simplifying any systems to make them more workable – and importantly, fun – for me.

Being somebody who loves the “ideal of organisation“, but is reasonably bad at maintaining that concept past the first rush of good intentions (ie. past a week or more), I knew I had a need for some kind of reminder / appointment / task management system, some kind of daily writing practice or journaling system, and something else…

A Writing Notebook is NOT a Journal

For sometime I’ve struggled with the whole writing a journal thing – although I do maintain a journal electronically – it is very occasional. I have spoken in the past about my need to take weekends off from writing, and large sections of weeks between novel writing expeditions. And I’ve also found that writing regular journal entries – with actual dates, can become highly emotional and very self-possessed. Me, Myself and my feelings…sometimes putting those down onto paper has not been particularly helpful.

As far as I’m concerned (based on my own limited experience in writing, admittedly), writing a novel requires very different disciplines to writing brief snippets of either creative writing or journal writing. The two certainly didn’t appear to work for me. My novels needed concentration, determination, the ability to strategise and have an overall view of the entire thing – from characters, motivation, cause and resulting effect, timelines and plots (and subplots). Both of my novels written so far run over the 300 page mark. Managing those storylines and plot-points, conflict and resolution were a very different thing than writing about my observations and feelings in the “real world”. Journal writing was a view of a day, a brief summation of something which was rarely linked with the next entry. Novel writing is building entire new worlds and ruling over them.

No, if there was one thing I was sure of a few months ago, it was that my Writing Notebook would never be used as a diary or journal – it might include excerpts of my impressions or reactions to something, but those would be used to create fictional work from – or as practice to develop my writing skills. Secondly, it might well include some pysche-searching work or exercises, but not in a day-to-day approach.

As it is, my journey into a writing notebook, as against a journaling system went swimmingly well once I had grasped this concept within me. Other writers may well use their notebooks / journals in an entirely different way, including daily dairy entries and the like, and I have no concerns over this.

But defining what your objectives are in holding and maintaining a writing notebook is vitally important to any writer’s success in using them.

The Journey to a Writing Notebook (or two or three)

I have lost count of the amount of times that newbie writers like myself are told to keep a notebook with us at all times – even when asleep; even on the toilet. Outside, inside, ever-ready for that eureka moment or to simply write into.

Capture that idea, story, dream, word, plot, character, setting, plan…carry a notebook at all times. Write them down – or else you will forget!

Yes, those words of advice sounded admirable. I agreed with them whole-heartedly. I’ve lost many wonderful ideas to time and distance simply by not having the gumption or ability or lust to write them down.

But I am a woman who doesn’t carry a handbag or purse around with her unless she really needs to – and that’s more to do with the rest of the family making use of my carry-all abilities for wallets, mobile phones etc, than my general desire to haul something around outside of my clothing.

Outside of those family shopping or travel times, I walk around with all weaponry (ie. a mobile phone – if I remember it; a wallet of not-much-money – if I really need that also, and my car or door keys) in the pockets of my jeans. My wallet is small enough to fit, so is everything else – with a squeeze, and provided I don’t need to bend over too often.

There’s no room for a notebook, though. Not even a very tiny one. And forget about the pen.

I am also a light but poor sleeper. So if I do wake from a dream with some good ideas, I tend to prefer to not wake myself up drastically by putting the bedside light on, to write into a notebook. I would much better try to get back to sleep in peaceful drowsiness. Besides, all those excellent ideas at 2am in the morning never look quite so excellent in the sombreness of a workday morning after.

Still, heeding the good advice, I’ve peppered my house, and larger satchels, and handbags with many different sizes and kinds of notebooks, all for the specific usage of writing my writings into.  Until recently, they all remained virginal in their disuse.

I’ve always had a love of a good stationery store, second only to bookstores. I could – and have – spent hours wondering the aisles of stationery, choosing from various little tools, notebooks, ring-binders, files and post-its. My house probably contains many such purchases, simply because I love them.

In fact, journals, creative journals and the like have long been part of my own life. Being a paper-crafter of old, I’ve created or hand-made several little decorative journals myself to use. But for those, it was about the designing and decorative opportunities – not the actual writing inside. As far as I was concerned, a nice clean white page inside was a good indictment to the prettiness and art-i-ness found outside, which was the point entirely. Look and appreciate the covers and pretty bindings, never mind the contents.

So – notebooks aplenty there is around these parts, all crying out to be used.

Despite my obvious lifestyle reluctance, there came a time this New Years, to listen to the advising voices: Get a notebook…Use the force, Luke. Be a proper writer…

This came about (of course it would) by the loss of an excellent ground-breaking fortune-producing life-enhancing tear-producing idea I came up with one Autumn afternoon; and which I thought so stunning that I spent a good two hours musing over. I was too lazy (and smug) to write it down – not even on the laptop I was sitting next to – because I surely wouldn’t forget such a momentous eurekan idea as this one, would I?

You bet I did. It stayed with me for several days, dwindling in detail as I went about my daily chores. I was simply too lazy to write it down, but that was okay, as here I was, over the dishes, still remembering it, wasn’t I? Even if I couldn’t quite grasp that whole plot-line anymore. And about that character – what did she actually do? And what was the idea anyway?…

My lost idea was gone within a week of being born. It was a short life, and I wasn’t a very good parent to it. Perhaps I put myself through that loss just to show me that this indeed does happen. And that I can be stupidly lazy with my own muse at times.

Come the New Year, I began looking for the ultimate writer’s notebook, the Moleskine. Despite looking all over the county, I never found one. So, for my main notebook I’ve had to settle on a discounted winter sales special – a geniune patent leather notebook, in bright pink, from the M by Staples collection. It’s shiny and pink in its expectations, I must say.

That’s my main one, although there are, as I indicated above, others. Smaller siblings, one for my satchel, one for upstairs. Various calendars, electronic note-taking devices like my iPhone (which is great at doing quick note voice recordings also) and various scraps of paper located in a rush at work, and written on with stubbly colouring-in pencils. Now I have a good collection of notebooks and other tools, and some of them are filling up!

Time to now take a look at a system to organise (as least as possible) my scribblings, then?

2. What Goes into my Writer’s Notebook(s)?

Anything. Simple, huh?

• Story ideas – seeds of these, or entire planned plotlines (the former is much more common and recommended)
• Story sentences
• Story snippets
• Title ideas
• Planning for writing projects
• Plots
• Timelines
• Scene ideas
• The occasional haiku
• Lists of new words – some I’ve made up possibly
• Reminders for my current novel in progress. Tasks, ideas, new ideas…
• That eureka idea for a blog article – yes, I’m not precious about non versus fiction work – it all goes in.
• Character profiles
• Descriptions from my everyday life – people, places, events, feelings, senses invoked (smell being an important one for me, or touch) – these can be small details or a paragraph of description on feelings or physical descriptions
• Dreams – daydreams or night-time dream snippets if they resound with me. Normally written the morning after, not at 2am!
• Overheard conversations (happens particularly when commuting, I’ve found) or dialogue
• Doodle drawings
• MindMaps – lots of these. Either as brainstorms or for planning of projects.
• Diagrams, graphics, columns of facts and figures
• Arrows, icons, smiley faces, exclamation marks, linking arrows from one to the other.
• Reminders to do with writing project tasks
• Reminders to do with new tasks thought up.
• Phone numbers, dates and tasks if I’ve got nothing better to write on, when given me.
• Writing prompts – ones found elsewhere (billboards, magazines, television advertisements, the internet, books) or ones I’ve made up myself.
• Phrases or Quotes I read somewhere, anywhere, and like or find inspirational.
• Poems I find and love – with credits.
• Poems I write myself, or start off with in the notebook.
• New words and word definitions I’ve learnt
• Words I’ve made up – and their definitions (and pronunciation guide)
• General reactions and feelings – to experiences, readings, events, ideas, news…(see more on this in the section entitled YellowOrange Sweetspot Reactions below)
• Research – facts, figures, websites, lists
• Even more lists (I love lists) – favourite words, new words, shopping, favourite books, whatever.
• Attachments – yes, magazine clippings or business cards – these would normally go into an inspiration or research file, but some remain still in some of my writing notebooks.
• Did I mention the doodles?

3. What Do I Do With The Scribblings?

Q: All those notes, all over the place. How on earth do I find anything?

A: Actually, that depends on what kind of item inside that notebook are we talking about, so first I have to (mentally, if not physically) catergorise them. This is normally done right at the time I am writing them down. We are natural catergorisers, most of us, are we not? Knowing what to do with the scribbling is normally quite easy to work out, even as I write them.  However some of them are left to mature.

1. The ‘Down-and-Forget’ Notes / Reminders

Firstly, sometimes it’s not about finding them at all. A lot of the scribblings are almost valueless as soon as they’re out on the paper. That’s because my mind operates its own memory functions much better once I’ve written something down. For instance, if I suddenly have a new and valuable task come to mind for a current writing project, if I write it down the once, it will be retained much deeper into my memory, and there’s a very good chance that I will remember it long enough to deposit the task into my task management systems, or to even just do the task and complete it off.

2. Inspiring Ideas 1 – ‘The Inspiration Resource’

For much of the rest, the physical notebooks are basically a collection point close to the point-in-time of the ideas and clippings from my life.

Note that the notes are not guaranteed – because I still don’t walk around town lugging a notebook with me on too many occasions. My system is not weatherproof against the fact that I generally have many places in my day where no notebook is immediately available to me. But I have trained myself to think over the idea when it arises, and make a mental note to capture it as soon as possible. This generally works for the bulk of my ponderings.

Some scribblings are just random notes or haikus, lists of words etc, word-play, quotes, phrases, drawings which form a basic reference point of inspiration if I need to come back to them.

Rifling through a filled notebook like this is pure pleasure. I have an old notebook I’ve somehow retained from my childhood years – in it I wrote (and drew) my favourite poems and quotes of the time. Now, despite the childish writing, and sometimes questionable choice of poems and topics, reading that notebook is guaranteed to give me some thoughts towards another project I might like to do. Or it might just make me smile or laugh.

3. Inspiring Ideas 2 – ‘The Record-It-Better-Later’ Ideas

The others are either scribblings centred on my current writing projects – new plotlines, new characters, a timeline, history, research notes or new tasks; or they are brand new but seemingly good story / plot / character / setting / blog article ideas.

All of these inspiring ideas and scribblings have places to go – the ‘current project seeds’ go into my current project database (held electronically), the later ‘new ideas’ into other databases where I keep new ideas to muse over, when I’m ready. Normally you would see me transferring the former quite quickly onto my computer, but with the fresh ideas I possibly won’t want to pay too much attention to them once they’re into the writing notebook, for fear of interrupting my own focus on current projects. So I may let them sit in the notebook for a while stewing before transferring them onto a computer database or system. The coloured tabs indicate I’m yet to do something with them.

To allow me to find them all, then, through quite a few notebooks, or quite a few pages of both valuable and invaluable scribblings, I’ve developed a strange but simple system of bookmarking through my writing journals which I’ll detail for you below.

4. Finding That Great Fresh Income-Generating Novel Idea about Teenage Vampires on the Fens

Q: What’s my great but strange (not to mention simple) book-marking system, then?

A: Post-it notes or tabs. Tiny ones.

I use five different coloured tabs, and stick them out from the pages once I’ve written a “scribbling” (scribbling is my term for anything written or drawn into my writing notebooks – it harkens back perhaps to my graphical and handcraft hobbies and drawing abilities).  I guess there could be more – or less – colours. But five is enough for me. Besides, that’s all the shop sold.

Each notebook has a set of these post-it tabs inserted into the front cover where possible. For my main notebook, I also keep a pen attached.

Although tiny, I can write a brief title or description onto them, allowing me to locate that awesome (and original, lol) vampire idea I know I wrote down circa June last year into some notebook. The title on that one would be “Teenage Fenland Vampires” and it would be on a pink tab sticking out from one of my notebooks.

Here is my personal colour-scheme of tabs -

Green - Story / Plot ideas or Seeds- generally thought-out to some degree. I may have even worked on this with diagrams and text within the notebook for a few pages. I like the idea of these being seeds for further work, so green seems fitting.

Purple – Current work in progress (WIP) ideas – normally these would be transferred over to my project folders quite quickly.

Blue – Excerpts / Descriptions – for all those short descriptions of everyday people / events / places / feelings / dialogues overheard. These may well be of use to bring my stories to life with characters or descriptions.

Red - Misc – everyone needs a miscellaneous category, especially when in a hurry. It’s the title or description that’s important anyway. Used for valuable quotes, research (if not for the current projects) and important lists for example.

Yellow/Orange - Sweet Spots – the work or writings towards my own psyche as a writer. Further explanation is found below.

An Opinion on New Story Ideas or Seeds (and their impact on a novel writer).

I prefer not to over-process these. I am not, at this point, a short story creative writer, and I have little need for lots of story ideas – in fact too many can be more of a burden than a quiet period allowing me to concentrate on writing an actual book.

The purpose of my writing notebooks in this respect are to get the darned new ideas out of my over-extended head, onto paper, and therefore more easily forgotten – for a time.

Therefore I tend to use the writing notebooks to document these as quickly as possible, transfer them into a database, and get on with the actual act of writing my current projects – novels.

This refers to my creative writing side. Any ideas for non-fiction (blog articles, ideas for ebooks or reports etc) are fostered, adopted and planned as much as possible through the notebooks and elsewhere. These, I hope for -  as many as possible. Heck, I hope for a huge warehouse of non-fiction ideas so that I don’t have to spend too much time tugging at my muse for these.

A Second Opinion on Fiction or Creative Writing Snippets

Although I acknowledge the many benefits gleaned in writing fictional snippets – character profiles, story or plot ideas, descriptions of characters or settings etc into a writing notebook, as a novel writer I must admit that I would not tend to use these, no matter how well organised and accessible – in my current writing projects.

Even if I do remember that two years beforehand I actually wrote a paragraph of wonderful text describing a vampiric love-scene between two characters, and I’ve just arrived at exactly that scene in my wonderful novel – well…I’m not one to suddenly move out of the flow of writing and look up that older scribbling to see if I can use it. I think of these descriptions and fictional / creative writing snippets as fodder for inspiring further ideas, or as general writing practice. You never know – from one of these may well come that best-seller novel at a later date.

Yellow/Orange Sweet Spot Reactions

There are some types of entries – normally written during very hormonal or quiet times, that aren’t really a quote or poem, or other inspiration resource, aren’t descriptions of things which I have witnessed or overheard, and aren’t story ideas or seeds – but they are a certain depth of investigation into my own mind, personality and psychological workings. These are the excerpts where I’ve written my reaction to something – things that bring fear or love, surprise or wonder to me, events or places that bring out certain values within me.

Ralph Fletcher, in his book, “A Writer’s Notebook, Unlocking the Writer  Within You” suggests that writers react, and in a writer’s notebook they create a place to record those reactions.

Holly Lisle, in her excellent online writing course, How to Think Sideways, puts new course attendees through an exercise called Your Sweet Spot Map. In this, the writer is asked to create mindmaps or cluster diagrams of reactions to phrases such as “I fear…” or “I shiver…”. From this exercise a sweet spot map is developed – those things which mean a lot to a writer, those things that perhaps should be turning up in their writing.

I would suggest that over time -

• some of those reactions would stay the same – my fear of spiders is never going to go away, for instance (and there’s a good chance I’ll use that gut-wrenching panic at arachnoids within a story or two of mine) – and -
• new ones will form over time with new experiences. As these develop, I as a writer, record these into a writing notebook, along with my thoughts and feelings.

My writing notebooks therefore not only capture outright story development ideas, but the basic values and passions (both positive and negative) sitting behind in my own psyche which allow me to write passionately.

I colour-code these Reaction / Sweet Spot musings with a yellow/orange post-it tab and label them appropriately. Over time I will return to reassess these values – the fears and loves, feelings and opinions formed over my own life time, and how these work through my own writing. What better place to do that than in one of my own writing notebooks?

Products and Links:

1. Journals in M by Staples range (U.S. link, although these are also available through Staples U.K.)
2. A Writer’s Notebook, Unlocking the Writer Within You by Ralph Fletcher (U.K. amazon link, click on the icon to open up U.S. details and links).
3. How to Think Sideways writing course by Holly Lisle. (affiliate link).
4. The top picture shows a pink moleskine – I can’t find any, but it’s worth covetting for the future.

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