A Writer's Notebook

The writing course I am doing at the moment is excellent and there have already, after only a week and a half, been many helpful suggestions. A lot of the work we have done centres around have a writers notebook. This idea is not new to me, of course, it is standard advice almost anyone with any experience will give you. So Important is a notebook in the writing process, that in the past I have been put off writing altogether because of my struggles with using a notebook. This time I am determined to get to grips with this important part of the writing process, so I did a bit of self-analysis and combined it with a bit of research, and came up with some reasons and some solutions.

1 Fear of making a mistake.

My fears, like many other peoples, are rooted in childhood. In this case, my lack of ability to spell was the problem. I realise that I am not afraid of being corrected, but I am terrified of being laughed at. For some reason, poor spelling is funny for some people, and certainly, at school, I was subjected to being patronised, having my work passed around so that everyone could laugh and other forms humiliation. So reluctant was I to write when I left school that I wouldn't even sign cheques for fear of making a mistake. Writing in a notebook would be like setting myself up for humiliation.

Technology has been my saviour here, a word processor with a spell checker not only solves this problem but made me realise that my spelling errors largely consist of transposing certain sets of letters, easy to solve when you know that you are prone to doing it.

2 Fear of spoiling something.

Notebooks are so lovely when they are new with beautiful clean white pages. I hate the thought of spoiling something like that. Now interestingly enough I have come across many other people who share this odd phobia so did a bit of research into other peoples solutions.

Use spreadsheets, they are easy to organise and change and are not remotely pretty.
Use a computer notebook as they don't have the same charm
Use a Paper Notebook, but scrapbook style. Sticking things onto the pages once you know that you want to keep them.

So after working on these ideas for a few weeks, I think that I have come up with solutions that work for me.

I tried spreadsheets first and actually have a couple of stories planned out on spreadsheets, I don't think that they are for me though. I can never remember how to use them and they are so functional it puts me off. Being that organised seems to kill my imagination.

I downloaded a computer notebook mine is called Simple Note and has the advantage of being very simple. Easy to make a quick note and access it when I need to. I have a separate one for saving bits of web pages. Yes, I know that there are apps that will do both, whilst teaching me to juggle and making me coffee, but honestly, I get confused easily.

I have created a storyboard, A large corkboard on an Artists easel I can stick notes, photos anything on and rearrange them to my heart's content. This is my favourite thing I can see everything at a glance I love it.

The strange thing though is that doing all of those things must have been cathartic because I have now organised my notebook using post-it tabs. I was seriously worried that I would write things down and never find them again. I have a recipe book which has that problem