A Writer's Notebook - Lesson Learned

Today, I'm taking some time to clear some papers. They pile up, and breed like rabbits somehow, and since my attention span to clear them is very low, I don't get far. Anyway, as I was going through all these papers, amongst receipts and print-outs, there are piles of notes, brainstorms, scene fragments, character notes etc. 

It made me realise that it was totally inefficient to write these on notepads or scraps of paper, because it makes them all that much harder to organise, which means chances of me finding it when I need it are quite small. I do keep a writing journal, but I usually use A4 notepads for random brainstorm that may or may not go anywhere, only because journals are more expensive, so it feels like "waste" to write anything in them. However, I've come to realise that I do look A LOT MORE at my writing journals. I flip back and forth, consider ideas I have jot down, and that sparks a trail of thought that leads somewhere else, or makes me realise that I have already thought of something. 

So from now on....no notepads and scraps of papers except in emergency. It's all going in writing journal, staying in one place, and making the whole organisation far better. I hope.

How do you maintain your scraps of notes and pieces of information? Are you super-organised, or thrive in chaos? Or in-between and hope for the best?

Check out my Guest Post

Hello All,

I am doing a guest post over at the Editing Hat TOMORROW on Sunday, thanks to Adam for giving me my first guest post :-)

Topic: How Writer's Journal can be a useful tool for every writer

I will answer comments there. Hope to see you there - and while you are there, have a nose around Adam's blog. You'll probably enjoy his whackadoodle sense of humour.  I definitely do :-D

How Formal Is Your Everyday Writing?

This question occured to me as I was writing in my journal, and thinking about Virginia Woolf's diary. I was planning to read unedited versions of her journals, but when I looked at them they just irritated me, because not only it was in the usual 19th cent. style with lots of initials and & symbols everywhere (Jane Austen does that too), but also there were tons of notes on each page, giving us information of what it all meant. It was just distracting. But fortunately, her husband has written an edited version of "Writer's Diary" taking entries from her diaries that relate to writing. He also mentioned in the introduction that he will dispense with the notes and dots so as not to distract the reader. And I am thankful for that. But as I was writing about that in my journal, I noticed my own style. Even my journals aren't completely casual. For example, I nearly always say "I have" or "I am" as oppose to "I've" or "I'm". Even in the stories it is hard for me to remember to do that. I use full sentences. There are rare exceptions like being too tired, or in an extreme need of getting information out in a hurry. But usually even in those circumstances, I write down those notes on a post-it, and then when I transfer them to journal, they are properly written. Same goes for travel journals. Why do I do it? Simple answer is for myself. When I read my journals months or years later, I want things to make sense. I want to be able to read it without getting irritated at bad hand-writing or for things that make no sense. If I am writing emails, I want people to be able to understand what I am trying to say without guessing it. And if I am chatting, I don't want to come across as an illiterate moron who cannot spell things. (yes, I hate the current chat lingo. LOL or BRB is about as far as I am willing to go). Oh yes, paragraphs. Totally hate it when a paragraph is so long, it just all looks like a big block of text. What do you think? Are all these things important only in the work that we are trying to publish, or do they matter in every-day casual interactions too? For me, they most certainly do.

Example of my journal pages. Occassionally they are less orderly, but this is quite standard

Example of casul journal page, a quick map drawing in the museum

Do you just write your book or your world?

Several comments that you guys made in my last few posts regarding your writing habits, and especially Chris' comment today in this post made me wonder how do you manage to keep all your thoughts together - and I mean the kind of stuff that's not supposed to go in your draft, but comes into your head anyway.

For example, when I am writing a story, there is a lot of note-taking on the side. That's not for the story itself. That's the brain storming. If suddenly it occures to me that my heroine had an accident when she was 5, or that her favourite uncle is Uncle Bob, I write it down. It could be totally irrelevant to what goes in the book, but if I learn that little tid bit about my character, I want to make a note of it.

So for people who don't keep a writing journal or a notes file or whatever, what do you do? Do you just keep all that background information in your head? The act of sitting down and writing 1000 words a day or specific goals like that to move the story ahead, for me, mean actually getting ahead with the book. I don't count the brain-storming time amongst that. In my stories, there are nearly always long stretches of brain storming time required, because I tend to write more fantasy, and therefore I have a lot of world building to do, which is its own challenge.

But even in my "reality" based stories, I end up with piles of notes. Sometimes, I never use them again but they are not wasted, because once I write down something, I remember. I may not always remember where I wrote it, but I always know that oh yes I have thought of this before.

It's amazing how the brain works, and how much I underestimate it, because sometimes I think of something, think it a totally new and fabulous idea, but then I would find old notes from somewhere, written months ago, and I would have noted down exactly the same thing. That's precisely the reason why I am now learning to organise my notes a bit better, and keep same projects in same places, or nearby.

So that makes me wonder about people who say, I just sit down at certain time and write certain words. What about the thought process? Do you just do it in the beginning, and never have to go do it in the course of the writing? Or do you only follow the story, and not worry about anything else?

The Writing Journal

It's only since last few months that I have kept a seperate writing journal. As I prepare for NaNo, attempting to focus on only one project, it has become a journal more for that particular book, though I still have a few odd ideas and things written down in there.

This experiment of keeping a writing journal has been quite rewarding. Usually, I tend to scribble notes all over the place. I try to keep a specific notepad for a book, but I always end up writing in all sorts of places, and obviously don't have my notepads at all times. And I seem to accumulate so many notes (because I sort of think by writing) that consolidating them is usually a nightmare. With the writing journal, I have been able to keep everything together that's hand-written. There are still typed random notes in computer, but that's a different problem altogether.

One advantage of writing down the notes, and actually writing by hand is that I remember those things better. That's very handy when you are writing a fantasy novel, and have got a whole world to not only construct but also to remember all the tiny details. Also, my ideas evolve and change over-time, so again it's handy to have dated notes in a journal, because then I can make sure that I am using my latest ideas and decisions.

The writing journal experiment has definitely been a success, so I will continue to keep them. And another lovely thing about it that writing journals tend to take on a personality of their own, an extension of me, and by the time pages are getting full, you can clearly see it as you flip through the pages. So I get to see the workings of my own brain ;)