Paw Prints — writing

It's going to be November next month.

Er... yes... so?

Well, there are some people in the world who decide that November is the perfect time to try and write 50,000 words of a novel ("NaNoWriMo").

What might help you to get through NaNoWriMo and have something reasonably planned by the end? A Page One notebook.

This is a notebook designed by writers, for writers. As the professional novel-writer on the team at Nero's Notes, I got my sticky paws on one to road-test, so let me share my findings with you.

Commonplace Books were (are) scrapbooks where you could collect all sorts of bits and pieces - quotes, recipes, tickets, pictures... you name it really. They were used far more in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but perhaps Bullet Journalling is a modern take on it.

Waverley Books have brought out a range of commonplace books, in two sizes: 210 x 130 mm (the size I have) and 140 x 90 mm. The books are covered in genuine tartan cloth (from Kinloch Anderson of Scotland). 

Last time, I talked about the notebooks I use to capture ideas. Today, I'm going to talk about what kind of books I use once an idea has enough oomph that I think it will be a book.

This noodling around could be thinking more about the setting, or plot or the characters. Usually, it's a bit of all three, though plot and characters often seem to come together.

I've been writing seriously for well over a decade now, so I have a lot of notebooks that I've used for novel-writing. To cover all of them in one blog-post would leave you all wanting less (a lot less!) so I'll break it up into a couple of posts... Today's post is on the kinds of books I use for capturing ideas.