If you’re neglecting to arm yourself with two vital writing tools, then you’re making your job harder than it needs to be. Ideas don’t punch a time clock. They hit at all hours and often in the most inconvenient places. Making sure that you have a small notebook or tape recorder (you probably have one on your smartphone) handy at all times will help you capture those often fleeting insights.
In fact, you can actually use these writing tools to give yourself a healthy head start before you ever sit down to write. While driving or jogging or cleaning or cooking, for example, start thinking about what you’ll be writing next. You can jot notes while at the stoplight or record your thoughts into your phone or tape recorder. My writing coach client John Hudson, who’s writing a memoir that provides a startling insider’s look at the recent financial crash, makes sure he keeps a small notebook in the office and another in the car. “That’s the easiest,” he says.
It’s almost like cheating. Once you have the idea and its expression, you just have to fill in the blanks and then color by number.
I actually keep a notebook in the top drawer of my nightstand. I use it more often than I would like. When I couldn’t sleep last night, I started thinking about a media release I had to draft this morning. Suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere, the first line hit me. I needed to scribble down both the idea and the language that had formed in my head. So I forced myself to pick up that notebook.
Once you nail the idea or the language, or capture a memory, you need to reach out and grab it because like a soap bubble it definitely won’t hang round. Even if you can’t quite articulate the thought, making notes will help trigger your subconscious. Then watch out! Once you sit down to write, your sloppy writing is going to gush forward like a shaken bottle of champagne that’s just been uncorked.
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