Keeping A Writers Journal

Keeping a writer’s journal

Having a place to store your notes and ideas is very important because no matter how many times you tell yourself you won’t forget something, there’s a very high chance you will. Your brain has to process and recall lots of information every day, many of it won’t be related to writing, this is why it’s only natural to forget things.

A writer’s journal gives you a fun and comfortable space to look back at and add more and more detail to along your writing journey. You should make your notes in a way that suits you, there’s no specific way it has to look. Make it a place you enjoy and something you’d like to do wherever you are – on trains, buses, in café’s, at home or work.

You might use:

A traditional notebook

Lined/plain paper collected and arranged in a file

Your phone, tablet/Ipad, laptop or computer

It doesn’t matter what you use as long as it’s whatever works best for you. If you use something portable and easy to carry around, take it with you wherever you go and jot down things that strike you as interesting, unusual, useful and anything else you may want to come back to later. If what you usually use isn’t portable, write your notes in your phone and copy them into your preferred journal later.

A writer’s journal or writer’s notebook can be used to collect facts, fictions, observations from everyday life and anything else you come up with.

Your notebook can become a testing ground for trying out ideas, phrases, short-stories and scenes, bits of dialogue – all with the freedom and knowledge that if things don’t work out no one sees these trial runs but you; it does not have to be perfect. Overtime you may come to realise your journal can form a kind of personal ‘running-commentary’ to yourself, on your thoughts about your own work.

Keeping track of useful details:

Taking notes of the details of people’s appearances who you find interesting or recognise as a source of inspiration can become a habit that will help you with describing what your characters look like or coming up with new ideas for characters. You can jot down any interesting or unusual things you see or hear. The same can be done for places – writing down things you notice while you’re at the park, on the train or bus, in a house, a café, a museum, on the beach etc, will all help you write about them in your story.

Your journal might include:

General notes and sensory observations of the world around you

Things you have seen or heard, felt, or read – perhaps a passage of other people’s writing, or phrases that you admire

Words, synonyms and word-derivations that are new or interesting to you

Facts you may want to remember

Lines or phrases that you might use in your work

Images: postcards, pictures, photographs, mood boards that are in some way significant to you, perhaps because they conjure up a scene or story you might write about

Descriptions or sketches of characters and places you might wish to write about

Notes about periods in recent or distant history that you’re interested in

Ideas and plot lines that might be useful in the future, or that you are gathering for particular pieces of work

Anything you write down, even a single line, can be the foundation for a greater story.

Happy Writing!

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