Tips for Developing Story Writing Ideas

Short stories, flash fiction, novels, and novellas: there are countless stories floating around out there — and those are just the fictional works.

It’s no wonder writers get frustrated trying to come up with a simple concept for a story. One look at the market tells you that everything has been done.

But what makes a story special is your voice and the unique way that you put different elements together. Sure, there might be something reminiscent of Tolkien in your work, but so what? Echos of Lord of the Rings can be found in some of the most beloved stories of the 20th century: Harry Potter and Star Wars, for example. Read more

Essay Writing Ideas, Topics, and Publishing Tips

Around here, we’re usually so focused on fiction, poetry, and journaling that we often forget about another form of creative writing: the essay.

The first essay that captured my attention and got me interested in essay writing was Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” which was also my first introduction to satire:

Written and published anonymously in 1729, the essay suggested that impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food for rich gentlemen and ladies. This satirical hyperbole mocked heartless attitudes towards the poor, as well as Irish policy in general. (Source)

Read more

5 Ways to Prioritize All of Your Writing Ideas

There are always too many writing ideas or not enough of them.

Some days, we writers are so overwhelmed with ideas, it’s impossible to get anything done. Should you work on your novel? That essay you’re writing for your favorite magazine? You have an original premise for a short story. And you feel a poem coming on.

Other days, we just can’t find any inspiration.

Prioritizing Your Writing Ideas

Prioritizing your writing ideas will help you stay focused on projects you’ve already started. Too often, we writers run around chasing one idea after another, never finishing the big projects we’ve begun. A priority list that we follow with due diligence will encourage us to finish what we’ve started. And when inspiration is fleeting, we can turn to our priority list and it will remind us that we have plenty of ideas ready and waiting to be explored.

It’s a good idea to keep track of all of your ideas, and most writers are already good at this. We jot our ideas down in our notebooks. We litter our work areas with writing ideas scrawled on sticky notes. We scrawl concepts on random bits of scrap paper and cocktail napkins. You probably already have a boatload of projects incubating all around you. Now, you just need to get them in order.

Keeping a master list of projects (including your works-in-progress and future project ideas) is a good way to start prioritizing. Electronic lists work well because you can move things around. Notecards are also good organizational tools because you can spread them out, color-code them by form, genre, or deadline, and keep them in a box or bound them with rubber band for easy storage and access.

How to Prioritize Your Writing Ideas

Before you prioritize your writing ideas, create a neat and manageable list using a spreadsheet, word processing document, or set of note cards. Then, you can starting putting things in order.

1. Finish What You’ve Started

You’re three chapters into a novel when you come up with a breakthrough story idea for another novel. So, you promptly drop your project and move on to the next. This is no way to get things done. Make a list of all your unfinished projects — the ones you fully intend on completing. Tackle those first. Add any new ideas to the bottom of the list and refrain from working on your new ideas until you’ve wrapped up the old ones.

2. Do it for Money

I’m not a big believer in doing things just for the sake of money but we all have to eat. So, if you have projects that will ensure there is food on the table and a roof over your head, then get to those first. Business before pleasure, my friends.

3. Do it for Love

Nothing carries a creative project like passion. If you have tons of writing ideas and aren’t sure which one to focus on first, follow your heart. If you’ve finished your other projects and are eating well, then do what you love.

4. Little Things Come First

When you have a huge list, it can help to work through the little projects first — the ones that will only take a few hours or a couple of days. This is a great way to shorten your project list and get a lot done in a short amount of time. But take care — little projects have a way of popping up all over the place. Make sure you don’t let small projects keep piling up in front of your bigger projects.

5. Even Distribution

If you have big projects, little projects, ongoing projects, and one-time projects, short-term and long-term projects, try prioritizing one of each. In other words, write a poem, then a short story, then an essay, then start that novel, then go back to your poetry. You can go around and around. You’ll chip away at everything a little more slowly, but you’ll be well rounded for your efforts.

How Many Writing Ideas Are You Juggling?

Do you have more writing ideas than you know what to do with? Are you short on time or not sure what to tackle first? Try organizing your projects into a list and then prioritize them using these five methods for putting your projects in order. Keep adding all your new writing ideas to your list, but more importantly, keep on writing.

Borrowing, Stealing, and Building Upon Other People’s Writing Ideas

From epic romances to fantastical adventures, stories have been captivating audiences for centuries, and they have been inspiring writers (and other artists) for just as long.

There is a longstanding tradition among storytellers of reimagining or extending the greatest legends, myths, and fairy tales ever told, from the greek classics to last summer’s blockbuster films.

Certainly, many derivative works are frowned upon. You can find lists of authors who do not allow (and pursue legal action against) stories written in their worlds. You can find reviews that call such stories rip-offs or refer to authors as hacks who have done nothing more than steal someone else’s writing ideas.

But you can also find some impressive and respectable derivative works in films, novels, and television. In fact, many derivative works are embraced, beloved, and achieve critical and commercial success, plus massive fan followings.

So, when is it acceptable to use other people’s writing ideas? Why do some of these stories get heavily criticized while others are widely celebrated?

Once Upon a Story…

There are many sources of inspiration for storytellers. Some writers rely on their own life experiences while others rip stories from the headlines. Existing stories, both true and fictional, have always had a heavy influence on the tales we tell and retell. How many variations of Little Red Riding Hood have been written? How many fictional movies have been set during World War II? Let’s take a look at the different techniques writers use to tell stories that are built on other stories.

Formulas

Plenty of writing ideas are culled from great tales that have been told throughout history. Some of these have been converted into formulas that writers can use as storytelling guidelines.

In 1929, Joseph Campbell told the world about the monomyth, a universal pattern in storytelling that he found across cultures and throughout history. Writers turned the pattern into a formula, but perhaps nobody did so as effectively or famously as George Lucas, who used it to write Star Wars.

From the three-act structure to the hero’s journey, formulas have been criticized as making stories dull and predictable yet they have also been credited with providing writers a framework in which to create.

Historical Fiction

Historical fiction takes factual events from true stories of the past and overlays them with made-up characters or plots.

In James Cameron’s film, Titanic, two fictional characters fall in love on the historic ship that sank into the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean back in 1912. Countless novels, short stories, poems, movies, television shows, and video games have taken a bite out of history and used it as the setting for their stories.

While this practice is widely accepted as legitimate, it’s worth noting that China recently banned time travel stories because they retell history untruthfully (for the record, I think this is ridiculous and a violation of basic human rights, but let’s not get too political here). There is an argument to be made about the dangers of retelling history (take the holocaust deniers, for example) and a much stronger argument to made about making art that examines history.

Fan Fiction

Fan fiction is a favorite pastime for hobby writers who are loyal fans to their favorite franchises. Google “fan fiction” and you’ll find loads of stories set in the worlds of Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, and Twilight — all critically and commercially successful science fiction and fantasy movies and television shows. But that’s not all. Fans are also writing fiction from TV shows like Bones, Glee, and 80s nighttime soap Dynasty (yes, Dynasty! I couldn’t believe it either).

Some authors strictly prohibit writers from publishing material set in the worlds they’ve created (although they certainly can’t stop you from writing stories in your notebook). They feel that these works will negatively impact the integrity of their stories or compromise them in some way. Other creators either look the other way or encourage fans to play in their worlds. The television show Lost spewed a veritable onslaught of fan fiction and artwork, and the show’s frontrunners enjoyed the homages all the way to the bank. This relationship between creators and fans proved to be mutually beneficial. Lost became a worldwide phenomenon and one of the most-talked-about shows in history.

Generally speaking, writing fan fiction is not the best path to becoming a respectable or published author. The work is copyrighted by someone else, so you can’t publish a book or short story and get paid for it (there may be some exceptions as with contests or other programs by the few authors who are extremely supportive of fan fiction). I think fan fiction is actually a good training ground for young or new writers. It’s an ideal place to practice storytelling — because all of the elements are provided, amateur writers can focus on specific aspects of their work, such as characters or plot.

Public Domain

In 2010, Tim Burton brought us Alice in Wonderland (3-D). This film told the story of a 20-something Alice revisiting Wonderland, so it’s essentially a sequel to Lewis Carroll’s original Alice stories. In their 1951 animated film, Disney took Carroll’s work to the screen, combining elements from various stories and poems that Carroll had written to create a timeless classic that secured Carroll’s heroine a permanent place in our collective, cultural mythology.

This is basically fan fiction breeding fan fiction, but we categorize it differently because Lewis Carroll’s works are all in the public domain, which means anyone can take them and do whatever they want with them. You too can write an Alice story, publish it, and be safe from copyright infringement or intellectual property lawsuits.

When we take our writing ideas from the public domain, the work is generally referred to (not as fan fiction, but) as a reimagining, repurposing, retelling, or recycled story. Why are stories based on public domain works viewed and treated so differently from fan fiction? In these projects, writers are using material that is decades old, and the new work basically keeps the old work alive and makes it accessible to future generations.

Where Do You Get Your Writing Ideas?

All around us, there are stories being told and retold, revised and reimagined, stretched and skewed. Today, we have such easy access to stories (they’re all right at our fingertips) that it’s almost impossible not to be influenced by our favorite works. Consciously or unconsciously, many of our writing ideas come from other writers. The only question that remains is this: where do you think you get your writing ideas?

How to Come Up With Writing Ideas When Your Muse is on Vacation

Have you ever sat down to start a new writing project and then realized an hour later you were still sitting there, staring idly at the blank page?

Sometimes writing ideas don’t come easy.

In a writer’s ideal world, the blank page is something we always look forward to, a fresh canvas that we can color with ideas and texture with language. When our muse is dancing around, we feel motivated and inspired, so that blank page feels like the start of an exciting adventure. But if our mind isn’t in the right place, if our muse is on vacation, that same page is nothing but a source of frustration.

When I became a freelance writer, I had to learn how to write whether the muse was present or not. You know how muses are, fleeting little hooligans. I couldn’t rely on mine all the time. So I learned how to get along without her. That meant coming up with my own creative writing ideas.

Outsmarting the Missing Muse

Yes, you can get along without your muse. I won’t lie to you and tell you that writing without your muse is the same. It’s less pleasant, more time consuming, and makes you feel like a struggling hack rather than the brilliant writer that you are. Still, life (and work and writing) goes on whether the muse is at your beck and call or not.

First, you have to figure out why your muse failed to show up. Here are some reasons mine runs off and hides:

• I’m just not that into this particular project and neither is she.
• The muse’s secret entrance is blocked by my mental stress or physical exhaustion.
• She put her time in for the day and has clocked out (the well’s run dry and we’ve run out of writing ideas).

Once I recognize the problem, it’s a little easier to cope with the muse’s absence. I still miss her, but now that I know why she’s a no-show, I’m ready to forge ahead without her.

Forget the Muse, Discover Willpower

You see, the secret to facing the blank page without the muse is sheer determination. You achieve this by getting into the right frame of mind and using clever tricks to convince your brain that it can, in fact, function without the muse. I do this by telling myself any or all of the following:

• Once I get the first sentence out, the piece will start to flow.
• I don’t have to get it right (this is a rough draft, after all). I just have to get it written.
• If I hurry up and get this done, I can do something else.

Sometimes these simple reminders are all it takes to get your word machine in good working order. By forcing yourself to push ahead or promising yourself a fine reward, you can actually convince your brain to become productive without its mischievous little friend. That would be your muse, for anyone who hasn’t been paying attention.

Try a New Approach for Coming up with Writing Ideas

What? You say your brain is smarter than you are, and these tricks don’t work for you? Don’t worry, I have more magic up my sleeve. After all, I’ve been outsmarting the muse for over two decades.

• Take a break and work on a different project.
• Take a break and do something fun.
• Take a break and get your blood pumping.

Now, you have to be careful when it comes to taking breaks. You don’t want to stare at that blank page for five minutes, take a twenty minute break and then just repeat that cycle all the livelong day. That won’t do you any good and your absent muse will have won.

There’s a good chance your brain just needs to do a little stretching. Ever wake up in the morning and your muscles are all stiff? You yawn and stretch (and try to come alive). Sometimes your brain needs to do that too.

When you switch gears and get your wheels turning on a different project, you can build momentum for when you return to the one that’s giving you a hard time. Or, you could just be overworked and need to pamper yourself by having some fun. Play with the dog or the kids, watch some hilarous YouTube videos, or turn up the music and dance around in your underwear.

Uh oh. I said underwear. Here we go again.

That brings us to getting the old blood pumping. I’m not a doctor and I don’t play one on TV, so I can’t give you the biological physiological diatribe about how blood flow and oxygen getting to your brain can make you more alert and get those creative juices flowing. But take my word for it. A little workout can do wonders for encouraging the word current. (Yes, dancing around in your underwear to really loud obnoxious music counts as a workout. Plus it’s fun, so you get two for the price of one.)

You Say None of These Solutions Work for You?

If all else fails, pretend that muses are make believe and declare that you’ve come down with a case of severe writer’s block. Take two aspirin and go lie down in a cool, dark room with a warm washcloth on your head, pillows under your feet, and play some music for meditation.

You can go back to work and start all over tomorrow.

Yes, I’m still not a doctor. No, I’m not lying. This is an ancient home remedy that’s been used by non-writers for centuries, if not millennia. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of it. If you’re overworked, then maybe you just need to rest for a while.

When the Muse Returns

When your muse gets back and discovers all the work you’ve done without her, you might want to gloat. This could discourage her from taking any sabbaticals in the future. Maybe you don’t want to hurt her feelings. If she’s sensitive, then gloating might only encourage her to take off more frequently. All muses are different and I can only suggest you learn how to deal with yours through trial and error. But be sure to feed her plenty of cream puffs and chocolate éclairs.

You know what’s coming next, don’t you? Of course, because I’m so predictable. I want you to tell us all about your muse. How often does she take a vacation? How do you cope with her absence? Have you found ways to write without your muse or are you fully codependent on her writing ideas? Is your muse a dude?

Do you have any tips for how to outsmart the muse and come up with your own writing ideas? Leave a comment but don’t tell the muses we’re talking about them. We wouldn’t want it to go to their heads.

Questions, Curiosity, and Writing Ideas

Even though writing ideas abound all around us, we writers sometimes get stumped.

We search for topics, plot ideas, models for our characters, and interesting language. Unfortunately, our searches don’t always yield desirable results.

But by fostering curiosity, we can ensure a constant stream of inspiration.

Some of the best writing ideas come from simply asking questions: Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?

By using these interrogative pronouns to trigger your curiosity, you can develop questions – questions that need answers. And your answers will lead you to new writing ideas.

Curiosity Saved the Writer

Most writers are curious by nature. We look at the world around us and wonder at it. Who are these people? What are we all doing here? Where are we heading? Why do we do the things we do? How will we achieve our goals?

Remember how curious you were as a child? Everything you encountered spawned a series of questions because you were trying to learn and understand the world around you.

Bring that childlike curiosity back, and you’ll never need to look far for now, inspiring writing ideas.

Questions and Writing Ideas

By fostering curiosity, we can create a fountain of ideas. It doesn’t matter what form your writing takes or what genre you’re writing in. By coming up with intriguing questions, you’ll soon find yourself overwhelmed with inspiration.

Below are some questions that you can use to generate writing ideas. Mix them up, change them around, and come up with your own list of questions too:

Who

• Who is this story about?
• Who does my main character trust? Who is the enemy?
• Who in my life could inspire a poem?
• Who am I?
• Who does this character/person care about?

What

• What are the characters’ goals?
• What images do I want to create with a poem?
• What related topics could be included in this project?
• What motivates people to take drastic actions?
• What if…?

Where

• Where can I feel this poem physically? Head? Heart? Hands?
• Where did it all begin?
• Where will the characters end up?
• Where does this story take place?
• Where do these people want to be?

When

• When does a child become an adult?
• When did things change for this character?
• When did this story take place?
• When should this story end?

Why

• Why does this story matter?
• Why is the protagonist evil?
• Why did he/she do it?
• Why would a person take a great risk?
• Why are there stars in the sky?

How

• How did the character land in this situation?
• How will this story make people feel?
• How do the characters know each other?
• How do you describe something that doesn’t really exist?
• How far will the main character go to achieve the goal?

Keep Asking Questions

If you can keep your curiosity on fire and continue coming up with new questions all the time, you’ll find that you can write your way into answers and constantly discover new writing ideas along the way.

Try using any of the questions above for creative writing prompts. Simply copy and paste a question at the top of a new document (or write it in your journal) and then go – just start writing and let the answer come to you, through you, onto the page.

As you work through your writing projects, you can also use questions to help you overcome hurdles that are preventing you from crossing the finish line. Not sure how to move a plot forward? Start asking questions. Don’t know how to make a character believable? Ask questions. Want to write a piece that is informative and entertaining? Ask away.

Throughout time, many great thinkers have used questions to prompt creative thinking. Sometimes, one question will simply lead to the next, and that’s fine. As long as you keep your curiosity well oiled and let those questions flow, you’ll never be at a loss for writing ideas.

Do you have any favorite techniques for developing new writing ideas? Any questions that you ask to get through a project or to come up with new project ideas? Share your thoughts and ideas by leaving a comment.

How to Collect Writing Ideas While You’re Procrastinating Online

I love the web. In fact, I think it’s the single greatest invention of the twentieth century. It allows people to meet, connect, conduct business, and gather information quickly and easily, all from the comfort of… well, anywhere. It’s also an entertainment mecca. All that art! Music! Films! Literature! And games.

The web is an enormous resource center, playground, and time suck.

We’ve all been there: You hop on the web to look up a quick fact, check your email, or post an update to one of your (many) social media profiles. But what was supposed to be a two-minute action item stretches into a two-hour adventure as you click through an endless stretch of videos, articles, and Lolcats.

I Can Haz Writing Ideas wit My Cheezburger

Distractions affect everybody but writers are especially susceptible. As we sit crafting our prose, sometimes the muse escapes us and we’re tempted to venture away from our writing to find her again. The strongest among us will be able to resist the alluring pull of the internet’s dazzling distractions. But most of us, in moments of great weakness and in times of desperate procrastination, will succumb to the clicking, often forgetting about the muse completely.

Now, I’m not going to encourage anyone to dawdle. But a little procrastination can be helpful. In fact, I’ve come up with lots of great ideas for blog posts while watching music videos. I’ve concocted story ideas from images I peruse on iStockPhoto. Tweets on Twitter have inspired poems. There is no limit to the writing ideas that can be found while randomly surfing around the internet.

Now, I’m pretty good about restraining from distractions, but when I do succumb, I put procrastination to work for me!

I Made a Stash File

As I navigate around the internet while avoiding inevitable tasks, I come across fascinating stuff — stuff I’d like to use — but later (because, you know, right now I’m working on something, sort of). I used to use my web browser to bookmark interesting sites so I could revisit them later. Eventually, I switched to social bookmarking. I was starring articles in my reader and using StumbleUpon.

Things started getting spread out. If I wanted to go back to an illustration of an alien I saw three months ago or a mesmerizing poem I found a few weeks back, I might have to scroll through all my browser bookmarks, and then log in to three or four different accounts looking for the item of interest. The system wasn’t working for me.

Then I made a stash file.

Sometimes the Simplest Solutions Are the Best

It started with a text file. I found a particular site that I wanted to use as inspiration for a poem, but I didn’t want to lose the URL or forget where I’d stored it. So, I opened my text editor. I copied and pasted the URL along with a quick note to myself and saved the file to my desktop. Later, when I was ready, I knew exactly where to find it.

I started using that same file for other writing ideas that I found online. Then, I decided to expand my stash file. I created a folder on my desktop and moved the text file into it. Now I could save images to the folder. But for some of the images, I wanted to make notes. So I added a Word document to the folder (Word lets you copy and paste images directly to the document).

Now my stash file is bustling with writing ideas. I still use my other bookmarking systems, but for ideas and inspiration, I strictly use my stash file, and I love it. Sure, paper notebooks feel like home, but when you’re collecting ideas in the digital realm, you need a digital way to store them. I mean, who wants to hand-write URLs?

Tips for Stashing Your Collection of Ideas and Inspiration

You’ll need the following:

• A desktop folder containing a text file and an MS Word file
• The ability to copy and paste
• Some time to waste

Over time, I’ve found a few ways to make this little system quite effective. For example, once I use an idea, I can delete it. This keeps the files short and easy to peruse. I’ve also thought about creating a third document that I can label “used ideas.” Then, I can just move stuff to that document and it will be there in case I need to refer back to it later.

My favorite feature in this system is that I can easily search through the material to quickly find what I’m looking for. It doesn’t matter if my documents grow to 10 pages or 100 pages because I use the Find feature. That’s when you hit command-F (control-F for Windows users) and then enter a word or phrase to search for. Within seconds I can find an item that’s buried in a document. Easy as pie.

How Do You Harvest and Store Writing Ideas?

I’m always looking for efficient ways to keep track of all the great writing ideas I come across. How do you do it?

How to Harvest Creative Writing Ideas from the News

Creative people are always looking for inspiration and writers are certainly no exception. We look to the people in our lives, to nature, and to the books, music, and films that we love. We call on our muses, doodle, and daydream. We record our dreams, meditate, and contemplate. And we do all of these things in an attempt to find breakthrough creative writing ideas.

But we really need look no further than our local news stand, where creative writing ideas are aplenty.

Open up a newspaper, turn on the news, or surf over to your favorite news website. Guess what you’ll find? Stories. Lots and lots of stories. And lots of writing ideas.

Characters and People

The news is full of colorful characters, from the lowliest criminal to the most glamorous business executive. Local heroes, big time politicians, sports stars, and pop culture celebrities all mingle together in the pages of your daily rag. Be sure to check the society pages and the obituaries and let these inspire your character creations. If you’re looking for really far out figures, try one of the tabloids or scandal sheets. You can turn these people into characters in your fiction writing or you can zero in on them as real individuals and write a piece of nonfiction — an essay, an article, or even a biography.

Plots

I’m one of those writers who can whip up a character in no time, but coming up with a plot wreaks havoc on my creativity. Newspapers have all kinds of interesting plots and writing ideas for fiction. Look to small town papers for quaint stories that are usually overlooked by mainstream media. Large, urban papers will carry national interest bits. And many periodicals off the beaten path contain tales of the unusual, paranormal, and fantastical, which can be pretty useful for writers of science fiction and fantasy.

Dialogue

The newspapers are full of quotes, and where there are none, you can surely make up your own. Since dialogue is driven by character and plot, you can simply delve into the goings-on of any news story and start imagining what these people would say to one another.

Setting and Imagery

Don’t forget about the photos and other images! You can turn to a magazine if it’s a locale you’re seeking. National Geographic or any travel magazine will be great for giving you a sense of setting and for providing compelling imagery that can provoke a poem or creative language for other forms of creative writing. You’ll pick up interesting phrases like “down by the levee,” or “at the railroad junction,” which you may have not otherwise considered.

Historical

Are you writing a period piece? The local library will have archives of old papers and other publications that you can review and photocopy. Not only will you find creative writing ideas for character, plot, and setting, you’ll also pick up lingo and other period details such as everyday items.

Creative Writing Ideas Are All Over the News

When you want to sit down and write, don’t wait for inspiration to strike. Make it happen. The news is jam packed with creative writing ideas, and all you need to do is season it with a little imagination and your next piece will be simmering in no time.

Here are a few final tips:

• Get writing ideas from the news online, in print, or on TV
• Check magazines and periodicals too
• Another nonfiction source for writing ideas are documentaries

Where do you turn for creative writing ideas? Share your tips in the comments.

And keep on writing!

How to Save Your Best Writing Ideas

Doesn’t it seem like the best writing ideas come at the most inconvenient times?

It happens when you’re driving, in the shower, or eating dinner at a restaurant. Unfortunately, you’re not sitting in front of your computer and even if you were, you don’t always have time to stop what you’re doing to make notes about your latest writing ideas.

But nobody wants to lose a truly great writing idea either – so how do we save them before we forget them?

If your idea light bulb likes to shine while your hands are tied or when you’re away from your usual writing tools, then I have some writing tips for you to help you make sure you don’t lose your most creative writing ideas.

Five Tips That Will Prevent You from Losing Your Best Writing Ideas

1. Mini Notebooks. They’re cheap and small enough to stash everywhere: on your nightstand, in your purse, pocket, car, or desk drawer at work. Keep a pen or pencil with each one. Just make sure you don’t jot anything down while driving. It only takes a couple of minutes to pull over, write down your notes, and be back on your way.
2. Voice Recorder. Keeping a voice recorder on you at all times is another great way to make sure that no matter where you are (or what you’re doing), you have a way to record your writing ideas. Perfect for the car, a recorder is an ideal way to get a little writing done or capture your most brilliant thoughts. Writers have used mini-cassette recorders for years, but now digital recorders are plentiful and affordable. Plus, many smart phones and mp3 players now come with voice recording capabilities. Speaking of cell phones…
3. Voicemail. If you’re stuck somewhere without a notebook, then just give yourself a call. As long as you have access to a phone, you can leave yourself a voicemail and make sure that your best writing ideas don’t disappear among the millions of thoughts you’re having during the day. Plus, you can call your mobile phone, home phone, or work phone!
4. Bulletin Boards, Baskets, and Boxes. If you’re one of those people who jots down notes on scrap paper and napkins, this is the perfect way to collect your thoughts. By setting aside a bulletin board, basket, box, or other container, you will have a place to deposit your scraps and scribbles. This will help you stay organized and you’ll always know where to look when you’re trying to dig up one of your latest greatest writing ideas.
5. Just a Pen. As long as we’re talking about napkins and notes, keep in mind that most of the time a pen is all you really need. There are materials to write on just about everywhere and in a pinch, even a square of toilet paper will do. If you have your trusty pen on your person, you probably won’t have to look too long or far for something to write on. You might want to go with a Sharpie though; it will open up a whole new world of writing surfaces, like thick cardboard boxes, but hey — stay away from bathroom walls!

Most writers have lost dozens if not hundreds of writing ideas just because they had a stroke of genius at a most inopportune time. But that doesn’t have to happen to you. As long as you’re prepared at all times, your writing ideas will stay safe and sound!

Got any tips to add for keeping track of your writing ideas? Please share your thoughts in the comments.