Do you love to write? Then a Writer's Notebook / Journal is for you!
A writer's notebook is a special kind of journal. You write things down as you learn them - or as you think up an idea - or as you do research for your writing. There is no end to the possible things to include in your writer's notebook. It's a tool for learning, for practicing and for exploring ideas.
Grab yourself a writing instruction book and take notes of writing ideas you come up with as you read it.
Read the newspaper and cut out articles that give you ideas for a novel or give you statistics you might need for your non-fiction book. Even cutting out and pasting in good titles can help you learn to formulate your own.
Take a few minutes and explore your topic with mind-maps. Put a word or topic in the center of your page. Quickly brainstorm more words and topics that come to mind and link them with lines - like spokes on a wheel. Keep on coming up with more ideas and words until you have exhausted every possible thought related to your topic. You may be surprised at where your thoughts take you. Your brain loves to play games like this...this thought is connected to that thought and oh I remember this memory and that game...and so on and so on...You can also draw little pictures if you like.
Cut out a picture from a magazine and use it as a writing prompt. Make up a story.
Copy passages from your favorite authors novel. Look for great examples of description, settings, and turns of phrase.
Make lists of books you want to read or books you have read and write your thoughts about them, about the writing style and what you notice about how your favourite author writes. Study the greats!
Record snippets of conversation you overhear in a coffee shop or a line up.
Make lists of your favourite words, your favourite character names and whatever else you can think of to add.
List titles you come up with for your next great novel.
List ideas of topics you want to know more about.
Research recipes they might have made in the 1800's or things you learn about shipbuilding - anything that you might need to know to write your book or articles for magazines.
List all the things you know about. What are you an expert at? Write it down and find a place to write an article to share all you know about....
Keep track of publishers you might want to submit to.
If you find out the editor's name of your favorite magazine, make a note of their contact information.
Use your writer's journal to collect any and all ideas that might be of any use at all to your future "magnum opus"
Here are the sections I have in my Writer's Journal right now:
To Do
A section for the writing course I 'm working on
Quotes
Article ideas
Book ideas
Life stories
Family stories
Research
Blog ideas
Social Media ideas
Creative Writing ideas
Publishing - a list of places I could submit articles to
Authors to follow
Books to read - and notes on books I read
Grammar - at the end because I don't want to look at that until the end but I keep checklists for editing and the rules for the things I get wrong all the time, and words I tend to misspell - mispell- miss spell?
Have fun with this. Add to it every day. Practice writing.
What else can you think of to add to your writer's journal? Have you read any good books that would help new writer's get started keeping their own writer's journal?
Please share below!
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