View from the Mousehole

more writing advice

My Most Important Tip

Keep a good supply of your tools on you at all times. I carry two small notepads and a few pens and pencils in my purse. I have one to five subject notebooks in generous supply in my room.
My latest obsession is collecting pens and pencils. I can't go into a dollar store without picking up a supply of pens or notebooks. My friends know of my obsession and are always giving me cute ones they've found,
Why am I so insistent on this? One simple fact: Inspiration can strike at any time. You can't make an appointment to meet up later. You can't send it to voicemail. Best to make sure you have tools on hand if you just have a second to jot down a note.
Have I jotted something down and then not been able to figure out what I meant later on? Plenty of times. What do I do with it? I have a box....it's marked "pieces of string too small to save". It is full of most of the notes I've jotted on the run; snippets of dialogue I overheard, newspaper and magazine clippings..... just about anything that has inspired me at some point.
Why do I have the box? When I feel like I'm totally out of ideas, I clean out the box. Something in there sparked an idea at some point and I'm banking on it will again. Okay, maybe it won't be an idea for my current project, but it will break the dam and get things flowing again.