Write down your ideas

Write down your ideas.

Some writers don’t. They don’t because they insist that if an idea’s good enough, they’ll remember it.

This makes perfect sense for big-concept ideas, but not everything arrives into your brain as a big-concept idea. Sometimes what you write down isn’t the whole idea, even if it feels like it at the time. A book involves lots and lots and lots of ideas, not just one single concept.

(This is also why, incidentally, many books/films sound very similar when boiled down to their one-line synopsis. And why people worry much more about their one-line premise before ever having finished a manuscript. Once you’ve written one, you see how much more there is to a book – even if it can be tricky to reflect that in an initial pitch.)

Write down your ideas. No matter how vague they seem. Not all of them are the brilliant flash of genius concept-encapsulated-in-one-line type, but the less-brilliant can be added to something else to flesh it out a bit, and suddenly, there you go, you’re a step closer to writing that book.

Write down your ideas. And if you feel sheepish pulling out a big obvious I-Am-A-Writer notebook and scribbling away, take out your phone and write it in a text message to yourself.

(This also nicely doubles up as a useful activity for those moments where you’re awkwardly waiting for someone, don’t have a book to read, and need to pretend to be fixated on your phone. Win-win situation!)