Tips For Keeping Notes While Writing Creatively

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Tips For Keeping Notes While Writing Creatively
By Rosalinda Flores-Martinez

When I write fiction or nonfiction, I make sure I use my notes on my journals and those texts I have marked on books.

It is true that you can never be a good writer if you have not read widely.

In writing, you cannot spark inspiration if you are not passionate in your work. You would write dull as when you wake at dawn with no urges and kiss without fire. Yet, if your muses are up all the time as good work habits, your work will stand the test of time and tide.

Here are some tips.

Mark your books. This is a way of interacting with the writer and the texts, especially while writing creatively. (See articles online "On Marking Books")

Rewrite forceful statements and relate them spontaneously with your own thoughts.
Reread your old notes or journal entries. Get those that could suit the topic.
Explore new words. Writers are word lovers. They make their own (informal) definition of words.
Consult the dictionary and Thesaurus.
Sleep with your notes. Focus on a topic of your interest and expertise.
Try new ways of writing your texts in different forms like poetry, fiction or creative nonfiction.
A good exercise for your stock of notes is the prose poem which is popular this age of new media. Among others, save your texts messages, emails, blog entries in a notebook, disc or drive.

See this example.
The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

My notes as follows:

"Besides holding our hearts together through long periods of separation, it had the effect of making us tolerant of each other's yarns and even convictions.

The day was ending in a serenity of still and exquisite brilliance. The water shone pacifically; the sky without a speck was a benign immensity of unstained light, the very mist on the Essex marshes was like a gauzy and brilliant fabric, hung from the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores of diaphanous fold."

I got these texts to arouse my muses. I don't know what I will be writing, but just to keep what hit me inside I find attractive. I believe writers are gifted to get the materials they need, and as such, they need to feed on ideas. Also, what to say, what not to say, and what to reveal between the lines come vital in keeping notes for creative writing.

From the notes above, I wrote this prose poem.

Seconds

Losing grip of love affair, I hold thin folds of time like tongues of cookie layers on the shores of white sand and white sugar in the tub. Draping darkness lulls I to sleep, tired I, rolling side to side like benign beatings on low shores. Timepiece of earth, one heart of day and night, up radiant sky, the yin and yang, cloud cookie smiles and crossing slice of brilliant sun rays grip our sweat of rain in secs.

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