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Tips for keeping a journal like a professional writer

The written word is very powerful, and the use of a journal or some means of jotting down thought is vital to the professional writer, who may in any moment of the day come up with ideas that with passing time will disappear as fast as they came. Keeping a journal has many advantages for the professional writer:

*Storing ideas.
*Storing memories that may be useful
*Storing characterizations
*Storing words for a possible song
*Storing data

STORING IDEAS

Storing ideas is one of the day to day processes that a professional writer will do in order to give substance to their written word. Here, the development of a work as small as a song, or as long as a novel, can be those thought processes that bring their work to life, snatched from moments in time as the thoughts occurred, keeping them fresh and ready for development.

One of the benefits of a journal for this purpose is that those ideas can be explored in a moment's musing, and here, keeping pages clear for development of the same idea helps enormously because the thoughts on their own have little value. Only when they are delved into and structured do they make the idea that was originally entered into the journal into a substantial item of work.

Margins could be left clear for notes. Double spacing allows the writer the possibility of adding to the original thought processes.

STORING MEMORIES THAT MAY BE USEFUL

The atmosphere of the moment is fleeting. We may remember events clearly, though will we remember the thoughts that passed through our mind at the time of the event ? It is unlikely and the journal is a way of recalling all the emotions and elements that made that event memorable. How these help the professional writer is that when they develop similar scenarios within their stories, they are able to use these notes to add substance and reality to what they write.

STORING CHARACTERIZATIONS

An idea may come fleetingly into the writer's mind about characters they have met, or that they think may fit their work. Here, storing the initial ideas such as who the character is, what you have decided to call him/her, what they look like, can make notes that again can be built on in the process of character forming.

By forming characters in this way, elements can be added as and when they occur. Since the picture you will be painting will be one that uses only the art of words, what this stored information does is help the author to get to know the workings of their characters

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