Summer is coming up here in the northern hemisphere. Supposedly, if the weather holds up, it will become warm and the weather will be beautiful. As I focus more on my writing and source ideas, I also don’t just want to sit at home or at a coffee shop, either.
Recently, I started a writing exercise to get my creativity going. As many short story contests will be opening up soon, I thought I would try to enter one or more of them with different stories of various genres. However, the concept of range is not necessarily my strong suit. Thus, I came up with a fantastic plan: purchase a small lined notebook, pocket size, maybe about the size of your palm. Pair that with a good pen, such as a classic Parker jotter pen. When you have time, take out that notebook, and scribble ideas, and just formulate a story. Mark the date when you start writing, so you can keep track with a rudimentary timeline. Don’t worry about what the result is, just do it.
If you subscribe to my newsletters, awhile ago I postulated the idea of live creative writing, and how quickly it can go wrong. This is a more laid out version, as you can continue the same story at another time. Think of it as a journal, but instead of writing about what you did that day, you write some sort of fiction or non-fiction.
This, as I found out, is a much better exercise than I had expected. I made one very short story about a man in a coffee shop taking stock of his single life, and the one I’m almost done with is more fantasy-based, but a very plausible idea. After all, you can take the premise you quickly made, the characters (if any), and the overall outline, and bash it into shape to create something more special.
So far, I’ve only used this notebook in coffee shops. Fair enough, it sounds like I lied in the opening paragraph. However, I see a fantastic opportunity for exploration. As the season is coming up, I want to do a bit more of what I used to do: hiking, walking about the city (including places I rarely visit), and do some amateur photography or time lapses. I thought how fantastic it would be to use this notebook and pen. You have an entire world around you to write about, or at least, write down keywords that would describe an idyllic setting for a story.
I live in a mountainous area. There’s also a beach near a conservation area, the Lake Laurentian Conservation Area, which has a lot of mountains to overlook a good part of Greater Sudbury, along with Ramsey Lake. I bet, with a bit of hiking gear and that notebook, I could create some fantastic scenes and jot them down, even if it doesn’t form a coherent story. I’ve already seen what a few days worth of using the notebook in the city limits does to the old noggin, and I think it would be a fantastic exercise to repeat in a more wilderness area. Scenery is everything, and Greater Sudbury has a varied mix of source material to draw from.
I encourage you would-be writers and enthusiasts to try it out. The pen and notebook doesn’t have to be expensive, just as long as it is pocket-sized. Give it a try, you will be surprised by how it works.