The Nugget Book

I hate to say it, but your high school teachers were right (actually, I take great pleasure in saying this, having been one). You need to take notes. Lots and lots of notes. If this was true in history and science, it’s doubly true for writers. If you’re thinking of getting serious about the word business, you’ll need to get used to having a note book with you all of the time. It doesn’t have to be big, or fancy, or expensive, but it does need to be handy whenever lightning strikes and you get a “nugget” of an idea.

Your “nugget book” should be an uncensored, uninhibited collection of ideas, inspirations, quotes and clippings. It should be the “box” into which you drop anything that catches your attention, or that might be useful later on. In essence, it serves as a warehouse for extra material. This is the book you go back to when you’re stuck, or you find yourself with a little extra time and you’re not sure where to start, or when you need the perfect line for your protagonist. There will come a day when you’ll need just a little extra panache, and a nugget book can be your proverbial “secret stash” for clever quips.

Beyond this, a nugget book acts as a buffer for your memory. All of us, at some point or another, have mourned the loss of a brilliant idea that drifted into the ether while we were standing in line for lunch, or folding laundry. It’s shocking to go back to the nuggets a few months later, only to be reminded just how many gems have completely slipped your mind. Very few (if any) writers have the luxury of sitting down to work whenever an idea happens to show up.

On a purely sentimental level, I also like to hang on to used-up nugget books as reminders of my progress (and of the projects that fizzled). Just as some people keep scrapbooks and photo albums, the scribbles and scratches in a nugget book can provide a better understanding of where a writer has been.