As a writer, even as a lazy one, I keep a notepad with me at all times. Well, except for those unusual instances in which I’m out getting plastered, strutting my stuff on the dancefloor in a club and hitting on girls who are either drunk or have low self-esteem.
So much easy prey.
(image courtesy of saxon)
I might also use the Notes function on my iPod because I’m so cool and technologically savvy like that. I like to have some way of capturing life’s little moments – yes, yes, I know that’s what Twitter’s for, shush – some way of looking back on one instance of time that made me smile, or made me scowl, or made me curse the day my mummy ever let my daddy near her turkey casserole.
Below is an example of what one curious observer might find in a notebook of mine.
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Wise old man gives twig to young urchin, telling him it will change his life. Says it has magical properties. Urchin walks with twig, inspects twig, drops twig, gets run over while picking up twig. End.
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Granted, that’s not an example of me capturing one of life’s little moments because London doesn’t have magic sticks or wizards or urchins dying in hilarious road accidents. That was just me being inspired by a twig in a park. I might write that story above one day, turning it into a moral lesson about not trusting old men, or write it as a bloody obvious metaphor for those annoying fuckers who use their iPhones as they walk.
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Far away in a land long forgotten, just outside Ipswich, where kings wear armour and battle annoying nephews with large armies of revolting peasants, there is a young urchin with scruffy hair and a thrice-broken nose seeking a scrap of bread to survive.
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And here’s a few real, real-life moments that I like remembering from time to time.
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Woman, early thirties, walking along river alone, feeding ducks/swans. Writerly observation: she’s infertile.
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Character wants to be milkman – good job for being secretly in love with someone.
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In fact, because of my habit of writing down random little snippets of life, a friend suggested to me recently I go all multimedia on my first novel’s ass – photos, iPod notes, Tweets, random scribblings, and the actual journal text itself, all embedded into the reading experience. Sounds awesome in my head, possibly because writing my self-parodying travel memoir about a young backpacker “finding himself” suddenly doesn’t sound like a horrific chore like de-weeding your nan’s allotment, it sounds more like an afternoon in the park with ice cream and a Frisbee.
I suppose my point here, for all potential writers to note, is that your writer’s mind should always be active and that you should break tasks down into manageable chunks. But maybe you shouldn’t listen to me; after all, I’m turning my great masterpiece into a picture book and I write two-minute stories about magic twigs.
Looks magic to me, all right.
(image courtesy of Casper H. Peterson)
In Before the Cynicism 
Interesting post.