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A notebook is a writer's best friend
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Writers, above all other artists, are more likely to go crazy. Some of you may already feel this is true if you have experienced burning the midnight oil to get a chapter done or if your characters won't leave you alone all hours of the day, causing all kinds of behavior that might be considered by most as crazy (i.e. stopping at green lights, lighting the wrong end of a cigarette, etc.) But no matter how much sanity your writing projects rob you of, you keep going back, don't you?
Some might argue that writing, like a lot of art forms, can become an addiction. Nick Cave, while writing And the Ass Saw the Angel, locked himself into a single room for weeks at a time, agonizing himself into hair-pulling fits over just one little sentence. Michael Chabon, trying to complete his sophomore follow-up to The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, began work on Fountain City, just to throw it away after muddling with the 672-page manuscript for five entire years.
Those two examples really say something about the dedication of writers. We know when we have something special and even though our lives may fall apart around us, we'll keep chipping away at that block of marble until we have our masterpiece just the way we want it. No one can tell us when it's good enough, that's something you have to know for yourself. And if you have the compulsion to write, if that pen and paper or computer keyboard beckon you like Odysseus to the sirens, then by all means, give in.
And today's nugget of advice to those who have surrendered to the Call of the Writer:
Carry a notebook at all times! In your back pocket, in your purse, in your book bag at school, wherever. Keep this notebook devoid of all other notes. Don't write your grocery list in it, don't do your calorie counting in it, just leave it strictly as note taking for writing projects. Otherwise, it'll just end up being another notebook. And a tiny piece of personal advice, pick something small, something you won't mind being in your pocket for the entire day.
In this notebook, you should write down sudden things that pop into your mind, certain phrases or maybe you hear a bird song and it just hits you, you thought of a better way of describing the noise a bird makes without using the words "chirp" and "tweet." Write it down. You never know, it may be the first line of your bestseller. "And the birds that morning, the miniature phoenixes, the cardinals, made their morning call, and it went ____." See?
In your notebook, you should also write down words that interest you even if you don't know their definition or how, exactly, to spell them. You can look that up later. But something you heard on TV or maybe a very clever word they used on the BBC radio program they play at three in the morning on NPR. Sophisticated words like "inveigle" or perfect little words like "mulct" can help flesh out your vocabulary. Oh, those Brits and their expansive vocabulary! If they can employ fancy words, so can you!
Inspiration can come at any time. If you need to, have a tape recorder ready and document your ideas Hunter S. Thompson-style. It doesn't have to make sense to anyone but you. If you go back over your journals or diaries from when you were five years old, they still make sense, right? You know exactly what upset you that day when the entry was just: "Bad day" written sad-blue crayon. Something small and simply written, even the way that it is written, to you, is cemented in your mind, even twenty or thirty years later. If you were to write something down or tape record it earlier in the day and go back to it that evening, trust me, it will make sense to you even if it is just a couple of seemingly disconnected words.
Notes are unquestionably the writer's best friend. So much can be accomplished by taking notes, picking up on little swatches of things that inspire you. There have been times when I have forgotten my notebook and saw something very interesting during the day and try as I might, I will end the day by staring at the ceiling for hours and pulling my hair out because I just couldn't remember. Think of taking notes as putting bookmarks in your life. You could just say to yourself, "Remember page 154, second paragraph, third sentence..." And there's a pretty good chance you'll forget within a couple of hours. A note (or a bookmark, as it were, for sake of the metaphor) will make it easy for you to flip right back to what it was you wanted to remember.
Consider yourself a spy, trying to put together a complicated mosaic of images, ideas, and feelings. Except instead of a camera, you have words. And it is your job to find the right words to match the situations and predicaments in your head. Words are just your tools, the wrench and hammer of being a writer. Find the right tools for your project and never stop collecting them. Every time you have an exchange with an interesting person, pay attention to what words they use frequently. People tend to repeat themselves and use the same comfortable cluster of words over and over again. Pay attention to the inflection they use when speaking those words. Was it just, "Hey dude," or was it more like, "Hey duuuuude, what is shakin'? I haven't seen you in, like, forever!"? Make notes of the words and the use of words, they will help strengthen your characters and give them interesting, believable quirks.
And the minute you fill that notebook, go buy another. You can never take too many notes. Imagine you're making a wish-list out of one of those massive, eighty-pound catalogues you involuntarily get in the mail every holiday season. Imagine that catalogue like life, every page a different day. You want to remember that wonder device on page 2896 but you're pretty confident that you'll remember it. Bad idea. Do not trust your memory. Stick a post-a-note in there. That way, you won't have to worry about forgetting. And whatever wondrous thing that you discovered back there can be yours, just by turning a few pages.
Oh, and by the way, the definition to "inveigle" and "mulct" can be found at another great resource for writers: Dictionary.com
