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| When the muse kisses you, take note(s). |
You're a screenwriter - even if you’re not consciously thinking film, it’s always there. You’re shopping for a pair of new shoes and suddenly great visuals flash across your inner eye. You’re playing with the kids and “bam!” – great snippets of dialog pop into your head. You’re walking the dog and, while in the middle of the forest, entire plots explode in your brain.
There are those of us who carry the classic Moleskines around with us wherever we go. There are those who have bought a snazzy pocket-sized tape recorder at some point in their writer’s life. And there are more and more of us with iSomethings to record every bit of writorial inspiration.
Well... I've used Moleskines and they're surely still looking classic - wherever the hell they may be (and there are no doubt some real idea nuggets in there, too). As for the tape recorder - it's collecting dust - together with a dozen or so of those tiny tapes and dead - probably leaked - batteries. I never liked carrying that thing around with me anyway. And the iPhone? Yeah well, I've arrived in the iWorld - but I haven't recorded a single idea yet. To add to the joy, I have a lousy memory - which may be why I became a writer in the first place. From kindergarten onwards my mother made me write down everything I needed to remember. On that note - thanks, Mom!
Write down EVERYTHING.
Or record or whatever else works for you. Being a writer, though, not very surprisingly, writing things down still seems to work best for me. Sometimes the muse will rock you and sometimes she will just give a a passing peck on the cheek - but even the tiniest contact with the muse should be noted and stored. I'm not yet half diligent at this as I hope you already are.
Or record or whatever else works for you. Being a writer, though, not very surprisingly, writing things down still seems to work best for me. Sometimes the muse will rock you and sometimes she will just give a a passing peck on the cheek - but even the tiniest contact with the muse should be noted and stored. I'm not yet half diligent at this as I hope you already are.
Mind you, even though I don't put to paper half as much as I should, I still have drawers full of ideas - but I could have ever so much more! Will you be able to use every idea? No - at least not directly. Most of your ideas will not end up as a film or even as a line of dialog or character quirk. But if you revisit your notes occasionally, they will become part of your writer's brain, they'll feed your new creations, they'll fertilize creative dry spells and they become a highly useful part of your tool belt in pitch meetings, too.
How good are you at writing things down? How do you tick?
6 comments:
Not into screenwriting but whenever I get an Idea I always have my faithful Windows Mobile (HTC Touch Viva) with me and MS Notes & MS Words are my most favorite applications to write down stuffs. The phone has voice recorder as well, but apart from singing or playing Harmonica on to it, I hardly use it for anything else... he he
Am learning programming language these days and whenever I get an idea about any app, I write it down on MS notes including some pointers on algorithms for it and trust me they come any time, from middle of night to while shopping in a mall.
The one thing I've discovered is that over time, my "ideal" approach for making notes changes - it might be in a notebook for a while, then post-its, then a plain TXT file, then some special note-taking app. I know what's best, because that's whatever I use at the time!
However, in attempt to keep them in one place, easily searchable and linkable, I've started using an OSX app called Notational Velocity (http://notational.net) which is really simple *and* really powerful.
I use small ring bound notebooks while out of the house. It allows me to tear pages out as I record the ideas on an old Mac Mini that has no physical or wireless connection to the net. I use .rtf files, I used to use ascii text, but I do like some simple formatting.
I use the tear out ring binder to leave no trace in case anyone gets nosy. I use the disconnected computer (with a backup external HDD) because there is no absolute way to lock a computer off from the world using a firewall. It also protects from trojans etc.
I have been the victim of far too many suspicious events that "only happen in the movies" to leave my most precious data where someone can find and download it.
1- each year i start a new large notebook journal for ideas, poetry & notes
2- story ideas go into my story binder
3- clips/photos/articles go into my inspiration binder
4- a blog for art & inspiration/another for notes/ & one for music
5- all notes get turned into stories on my laptop which is constantly backedup also email a backup copy of final file.
6- i print out drafts but toss them & keep only the latest physical copy. So far it's not too bad. All paper files fit in plastic bins because I can't concentrate if there's clutter.
Don't like small notebooks or devices. I need to spread out.
and I manage to function really well in the real world. ;)
My mom always used to tell me to write down stuff I needed to get from the grocery store! Must say my memory power has improved a lot since then!! Now ofcourse I use email to pen my thoughts or occassionaly twitter/fb . I do revisit them once in a while to get inspiration or reflect on them.
And call it coincidence, I was mentioning to a friend the other day over gtalk to save our conversation since this could be our modern day version of the tissue paper (where almost all great ideas are born)! We were chatting about some random topic and just like that we had a mission statement in front of us for a poetntial new business idea! Yup, I try to save all my chat transcripts. Just never know when you might need it!
Cheers
I have a rubbish memory too. So notes are the way! Paper, computer, napkin, shopping bill ... whatever is close to hand - and then I try to remember to either transcribe them to the computer (and then save to disk/external drive at some point), or they get added to the piles and piles of writing that I need to go through, organise, and file ... at some point in the future. ;)
But computer seems to be one of the best ways - it takes up less space and it's easy to find things when you want them - assuming the titles have been written properly. Maybe I should learn the Dewey decimal system?
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