This is a superb how-to article in terms of making writing part of your daily practice and using a writer’s notebook to do it.
Keep in mind that writing anything is really about sitting down and actually writing! Talking about writing, dreaming about what you’re going to write, editing one paragraph over and over again until it’s just right (so you can then write the other 200 pages) are all ways of keeping you from writing.
I’ve kept composition books for years and record ideas and short vignettes about things I want to write about. I just read one of the old books last year and there was a funny story idea about Snow White going to therapy after leaving the prince because she realized she liked the dwarfs much better.
I also have one that just says, “Gladwell – metaphor – circus but never a high wire leader” which I think has to do with everyone using Malcolm Gladwell’s advice in business, but no one stopping to ask if he’s ever had the experience of leading a large business. (He hasn’t by the way, but I don’t discount that he’s a good writer.)
Vonnegut wrote his stuff on napkins, paper drink coasters etc., Faulkner wrote his on the back of undelivered mail while he worked nights at the post office. Twain’s scribbles were kept in voluminous journals and notebooks that people still study today for ideas and inspiration.
Don’t throw away anything you come up with – you might need it for the great masterpiece later.
And make it a practice to thank the inspiration muse when it gives you something. Part of writing is definitely magic and to keep the magic coming you have to give thanks for the idea.
By the way, this applies to ideas in general. Imagine if Bill Gates (and maybe he has) kept journals about his experiences growing up and his ideas. There might be entries like this:
1. The other kids keep laughing at me because I won’t play tetherball but I’d rather watch the game and calculate the spin speed it takes to hit Freddy in the nose with the ball.
2. My teacher got frustrated with me today in math because I found an error in her equation. (Note to self: Ix-Nay on the ath-May correcting.)
3. I’m at a new private academy and there are about three or four of us who are now in trouble because we used up all our school’s allotted time on the computer.
4. My teacher in Computer Lab let me lead the class today. I have an idea to write a paper about computers or maybe I will just keep writing all this code because it’s funner than tether ball.
Now go to your notebooks with pen in hand and write.
