I love writing story notes, character notes, etc. When inspiration strikes, but there’s no time to actually start seriously writing a new idea (especially while still promoting the current one) notes are the key to not forgetting details and moods of what was just inspired. This is how most of my book ideas currently exist – in the form of notes. And guess what? At last count, there were thirty-six of them. A few are trilogies, and I’m counting each installment of them for that sum, but that’s a lot of books to cart around in your head. Facts get mixed up, life intrudes, and soon enough, something is lost. So here’s a bit of free advice to all of the writers out there – write copious notes.

Later, you can rework, improve, or even re-envision those notes. Sometimes I end up with a slew of dates at the top of my notes, under the working title of the story. The first will usually state if it came from a dream or not (a detail I like to remember), and after that the dates are when major edits/adds/fixes were done. My zombie story (possibly a trilogy?) just got a major overhaul to its notes this week. The result? Excitement. It is now going to be vastly cooler than it was. I’d love to get further in actually writing it (as of now only part of chapter one is completed) but the notes will keep it warm until I can get back to it – without a bit of flavor or nuance being lost in the waiting.