Karl Whitney: Why it’s a good idea for writers to jot down all their random thoughts

Ideas are fleeting. Record them before they are lost, because any finished work, article or novel, began with one notion, says Karl Whitney

Writers should always jot down ideas as they come into their heads. Thoughts come and go. File picture

AN IDEA is a kernel of what is to come — or, more accurately, what might happen when you develop that idea into something bigger. You’re shining a light into a room you might never enter.

Most ideas go nowhere. Far fewer keep going and accrue other ideas, like a snowball rolling down a hill, and then, eventually, perhaps a couple of years later, those ideas might cohere, expand, and become a book.