A friend e-mailed me on Facebook tonight wanting to know how to get the contents of her brain onto paper (or screen) and stay focused on it enough to write something decent. She asked me, I'm sure, because I'm a professional writer and therefore I have all the answers. Ah, but that's not really the case. I struggle with that, too. Sometimes great ideas don't immediately evolve into great stories. It can feel a lot like dumping beef stew through a strainer.
If you have a Smartphone, you can do just about anything. You can cook a three-course meal, change your baby's diaper, and ground your teenage daughter all while you are speeding down the highway at 110 miles per hour (hopefully from the passenger seat.) You can also input notes and story ideas directly into your phone and come back to them later. Techno-phobic readers can still jot things down the old-fashioned way - with a pen and paper. That's a hard thing for gadget freaks like me to grasp, but it's still a possibility.
Jot and Dash
The only problem with the jot-and-dash method is that a lot of times, when you come back to your notes, you have no earthly clue what you were talking about. Sometimes you remember what your notes meant, but the inspiration is gone. In my line of work, I do a lot of interviews and I have learned the hard way that jotting down notes can be a nightmare when it comes to putting the pieces of a story together later on - especially if you have to include direct quotes. I do my best to always have my laptop available because, at this point, I type faster than I think. I can type while people talk to me.
Of course, sometimes you have no choice but to jot and dash. You can't just put the car in park in the drive-thru line at Taco Bell and elaborate on your ideas...at least not without angering a lot of other people.
Outlines
I'm creative and I don't like to do anything I see as "administrative," and outlines fall into that category for me. They are, however, a necessary evil in this business. You can't write a non-fiction book without one. As much as I dislike writing outlines, I have to admit...they're great. If you have a great idea but you don't know how to expand on it, an outline is the way to go. If writing is like assembling a puzzle, then an outline is like taking the puzzle pieces out of the box and figuring out what goes where.
Outlines and the Jot-and-Dash method share the same problem, though - it's still easy to go back and forget your train of thought later on.
Your best bet is to bite the bullet and just write. It doesn't have to be good; that's what editing is for. Put it all down and clean it up later. It's a lot easier to clean it up than it is to try and remember what you were talking about in the first place. I have found that when I do interviews for magazines/newspapers, my work always turns out better if I start writing immediately. When it comes to writing a book (which I am currently in the process of doing) I often write the outline and the chapters at the same time, since outlines are a requirement of most book proposals. That way, I do the grunt work and the more enjoyable stuff at once, and it helps to keep my thoughts organized.
Notes are often necessary when you're on the go or you can't sit down in front of a computer and just type, but my best advice for someone wanting to put jumbled thoughts into a story is to take the plunge and pretty it up at a more opportune time.
