Have you ever thought about writing fiction? If you have then no doubt you have heard that you should always keep a notebook about your person wherever you go. Why? So that whenever an idea comes to you out of nowhere, you can write it down. However, a proper notebook is about more than just a few scribbled words.

Write Every Day

The absolute best way to use your notebook is to write in it every day. You can choose from several approaches for this; experiment and pick what works:

Do your writing first thing every morning

Set aside five minutes in the morning and five minutes in the afternoon for writing

Write just before you turn in for the night

Jot a note or two down before you start your writing session every day

There are going to be days when inspiration just won't come or when you are just too busy to write but if you want to become a fiction writer and keep it up for the long term, it must be part of your life every day.

What To Write About

Anything and everything. There is no set prescription and you don’t have to keep your notebook just for the real gems that come to mind; some people work best with a scrapbook, bits and pieces jotted down, regardless of what it is.

You could have:

To-do lists for your daily writing sessions – ticking things off a list is incredibly satisfying. If you don’t want a to-do list, write down everything you have done at the end of the day

Brainstorming ideas for competitions – there are plenty of writing competitions and this is how many fiction writers start out. Start generating ideas for short stories, your characters, and plots. You might be surprised at what starts to come out

Character sketches – sketch out your characters, giving plenty of background detail about them; when you come to write your novel, you’ve got all the info you need to keep your character stories consistent

Plot outlines – it always helps to have an outline of your main plot, especially if you are writing a novella or novel. You can develop your plot quite easily in this way by breaking it down into scenes and building on it

Dialog – you might hear some great phrases or sayings as you go about your daily life; on the bus, the train, in the grocery store, wherever. They may not be totally relevant to what you are doing now but they may be for future work so jot them all down.

Review Your Notes

While writing your notes is important, so is reviewing them. Schedule half an hour or so every week to run through what you have and highlight any ideas that you think are definitely worth pursuing. A second notebook for these ideas might not be such a bad idea either.

One last point – do not ever throw your notebooks away. You may not want what is written in them anymore but they will always be a  source of ideas later on and, when you become a successful author, you can look back on them and see just how far you have come.