Creating and Using Your Writer's Notebook

Before starting, reserve a few pages at the front of your notebook for a table of contents. You can number each subsequent page so you can easily find lists and items when you need them.

To start, I leave a few pages at the beginning of a notebook blank as a place to collect inspirational quotes about writing. Here are a few I've written in my writer's notebook:

"If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."

-- Toni Morrison

"...celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit..."

- John Steinbeck, from his Nobel Prize acceptance speech

Also from the same source:

"The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams, for the purpose of improvement."

- Steinbeck

"Anyone who believes you can't change history has never tried to write his memoirs."

-- David Ben Gurion

"I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter."
-- James Michener

You can use your writer's notebook for anything your creative mind comes up with, that relates to your writing. This is not an ordinary journal and shouldn't have your free-floating thoughts on life in general. Think of it as a tool that will assist you in building your writing career.

For example, if you hear something and think, "That would be a great title for a novel," that's something that should be written into your writer's notebook. Do not trust your memory to keep these kinds of thoughts. Thoughts are here one minute and soon gone, like clouds floating by that cannot be captured.

Write everything down, regardless of how nonsensical it seems to you at the time. Ten years from now it may inspire you with an idea for a writing project you can't now foresee.

You could fill your notebook chronologically, but I'd find that format difficult to utilize. Instead I write lists. Here's a list of some of the pages I have in my writer's notebook:

Article ideas
Publishers to query
Character names, sometimes with character traits
Novel titles
Descriptive passages or phrases
YA novel ideas
Fragments of real conversations
Lines (that I'd like to include in a novel)
Sub plot ideas
Humor clips
Writers to read
How to fix my novel
Short story ideas
Comparisons and descriptions
Children's novel ideas
Research
"Mom" article ideas (your passion may vary)
A plan for 2008
E-book ideas
Website development
Themes to use in story development
Horror plots
Autobiography notes
Quotes about writing

The topics for your pages will be inspired by your imagination.

It is a good idea to take your writer's notebook with you wherever you go. That's probably why the pocket-sized Moleskine notebook is so popular. I use a much larger, spiral bound notebook and have a hard time fitting it into my active lifestyle. It fits fine inside my AlphaSmart case, however.

You never know when a cool writing inspiration will come to you. Don't be caught without a place to write it down, because thoughts are not something you can re-capture easily.

My writer's notebook is one of my favorite writing tools, one that has helped me quite a bit over the years, so I wanted to share my notebook organization ideas with you.
-- LindaJM

This page created by Linda Jo Martin of: