You will have heard this before: it is useful to carry a notebook or other note-taking device around with you to jot down edits and changes, ideas, lines of dialogue (overheard or between characters in your head), descriptions, interesting words or expressions, phrases or facts from books, and so on. This should also be kept by the bed at night for sleeping inspiration and dream snatches.

Perhaps you already do this, or perhaps you have tried and don’t see the usefulness. Here’s some ways to make it a more useful writing tool.

When I first started doing it, I myself did not see the usefulness. I hardly ever found things to write down. But like the writing muscle, the observation muscle – for that is what you are doing, learning to open your eyes and observe your world – needs to be exercised to work well. Persevere, and even if at first you don’t jot much, eventually you will wonder how you got by without your notebook.

So first, persevere. And second, be clear. Remember that sometimes it will be a while before you get back to that scrap you’ve scribbled down. Something like ‘Simon calls it a knife’ is not exactly helpful two weeks later…calls what a knife? When? Why? What was I thinking when I wrote that note to myself? Even if you’ve woken up in the middle of the night and are still half-asleep, train yourself to be a little more detailed than I was in this instance.

If your notes are related to your current work in progress, find a way to link it. I do it like this. Let’s say I note down a needed edit while out running an errand. It’s something that I won’t be implementing until the next draft (once I give in the temptation to tinker, it’ll be tinkering all the way and I’ll never fall over the finish line), for example, ‘Add that bit in about the father’. There’s three important father figures in the book, so this note would not be helpful when I get back to adding ‘that bit’ in. But in the actual manuscript, as soon as possible – while it’s still in my mind – I add a note to the relevant scene: [add in the exchange about Augusta's father from the first draft here]. I put it in square brackets because later I can then do a search for [ to find all those little notes to myself.

In this way, the notebook note is dealt with in a way that does not break the writing flow. Other, more general, notes go into my ‘scraps’ file for that particular work in progress, to be picked over later.

Jottings unrelated to the current work – new ideas, place settings or character sketches – go into a general ‘ideas’ file. It is important that you do find a way to make your notebook scribbles more permanent or easier to access, as they can get lost otherwise – especially if you wrote it on a napkin or other loose bit of paper because your notebooks wasn’t to hand. While my notebook is still literally paper (I like the texture of the little handmade Fair Trade notebooks from Oxfam), electronic tools like a PDA or voice recorder makes this transcribing/record-keeping somewhat easier.

Lastly, don’t limit yourself to words. My ‘notebook’ also includes a folder of pictures of people, clothing, buildings, antique devices from my chosen time period, postcards and prints of artwork, ticket stubs and so on: little scraps that, along with my travel photos, remind me of places I’ve been and things I’ve seen that may spark an idea or give me a setting. The notebook goes everywhere with me; the folder sits on my desk and like a magpie I bring glittery things home to it.