Do you have a writer's notebook? If not, run out and get one. Now! I'll wait...
Hope you found a good one, because it's about to become your BFF. It's the place where you can gather and store all sorts of "crumbs" - little bits of ideas, seeds of stories, kernels waiting to POP! Every writer I know has a writer's notebook. They record all sorts of things in it that may someday turn into a finished, published piece.
Here are some things you can collect in your own writer's notebook:
1. interesting words
2. bits of conversation
3. character names
4. setting ideas
5. photographs
6. articles cut out of magazines and newspapers, or printed out Internet articles
7. drawings/sketches
8. maps
9. lists
10. questions
11. quotes
12. short scenes
Of course this list is just a starting point. You can put whatever you want in your writer's notebook. The important thing is that you WRITE in your writer's notebook. And I don't mean full stories. Think about the writer's notebook as a laboratory where you experiment with writing, play with it, take risks, try things out.
If you have trouble getting going, try writing to a prompt such as the ones that follow:
a. I opened the front door after the bell rang and found...
b. She knew she never should have opened that envelope.
c. "Hello?" he called. "Is anyone there?"
Here are some great sites relating to writer's notebooks (click each to visit them):
Ralph Fletcher - Tips for Young Writers
Journal for You
If you're interested in becoming a writer, the best thing you can do is...write!
Here are some things you can collect in your own writer's notebook:
1. interesting words
2. bits of conversation
3. character names
4. setting ideas
5. photographs
6. articles cut out of magazines and newspapers, or printed out Internet articles
7. drawings/sketches
8. maps
9. lists
10. questions
11. quotes
12. short scenes
Of course this list is just a starting point. You can put whatever you want in your writer's notebook. The important thing is that you WRITE in your writer's notebook. And I don't mean full stories. Think about the writer's notebook as a laboratory where you experiment with writing, play with it, take risks, try things out.
If you have trouble getting going, try writing to a prompt such as the ones that follow:
a. I opened the front door after the bell rang and found...
b. She knew she never should have opened that envelope.
c. "Hello?" he called. "Is anyone there?"
Here are some great sites relating to writer's notebooks (click each to visit them):
Ralph Fletcher - Tips for Young Writers
Journal for You
If you're interested in becoming a writer, the best thing you can do is...write!