Getting It All Down

I used to write down everything. Random thoughts, fragmentary ideas, first lines for stories, names, observations, images, plotlines, interesting bits I culled from newspapers and magazines, titles, overheard dialog, inspiring quotes—anything that I thought would help me with my writing. I wrote on torn pieces of paper, napkins, matchbooks, cardboard, newspaper, cereal box tops, and even the back of my hand. When I got wiser, I used tiny spiral-bound notebooks, filling one after the other. If something came to me, I recorded it. For years I was relentless in my recording. I filled desk drawers, file folders, and shoe boxes with scraps of paper and little notebooks. Once, I tried organizing the scraps by taping them into composition notebooks. I took the time to number pages and create a table of contents for each of my seven notebooks. I tried grouping like items together. My attempts at organizing the content were, at times, fanatical. (I am by nature obsessive-compulsive.) In the end, though, my efforts proved futile as finding anything was an exercise in patience. Too often I was taken out of the writing moment, flipping notebook pages for something that I knew I recorded. At some point I gave up, packed the notebooks in a box, labeled it accordingly, then lugged it up to the attic with other boxes containing stuff that I no longer used but still wanted to keep.

I’ve always admired writers who kept notebooks. James Joyce kept one. So did Hemingway. Kerouac. I knew a guy who filled so many notebooks that stacked on top of one another they reached the ceiling. Of course I like the idea of a notebook, getting it all down. But what about making use of what one writes down? That’s always been my problem—at least at a certain point.

Recently I discovered a piece of software (for while my writing everything down has waned, my quest to figure out a way to organize it all has not) called Evernote (www.evernote.com). Evernote is an electronic note-keeping program that allows one to organize notes in any number of ways (how my mind works, for example) and—best of all—allows one to search content. Say I have an idea for a story in January. I can write that idea down and give it a tag like “story idea” and maybe add another tag like “winter.” In July when the muse strikes, I may want to pursue that winter story idea—and Evernote gives me an easy way to find that idea. What’s even better is that Evernote works on any computer as well as smartphones and iPod touches. The content is stored in the clouds enabling me to synch notes from one device to the next. Slick!

While I don’t know what kind of effect my new method of recording my thoughts and ideas will have on my writing, I can say that I am slowly getting back into the swing of getting it all down.