Like any other career, writing has tools of the trade that help us write better. Some of these tools are skills and knowledge, but some of these tools are physical. For example, most writers can tell you what books and magazines make up their bookshelf of resources. Most of these tools are obvious: pen, paper, typewriter or computer, and so on. But there are also tools that may not be so obvious to a new writer that can be just as important as the paper on which we write. One of these is a Writers Notebook.

Every writer who has a notebook uses it differently. From what kind of notebook we use to what's put in it, the notebook is very customized--tailored to a particular writer's personality, writing style, and needs. Some need a binder complete with pockets to be able to store clippings and pictures. Others are fine with a spiral notebook divided up into sections for their ideas, submission tracking, and so on. Some of us have more than one: a small one we can carry around for jotting down ideas as they come to us and a larger one that carries everything else. For the writer who uses it as a storehouse, the Writers Notebook is invaluable. Writer's block becomes less of a problem if you have a place to go for ideas and to explore news, pictures, poetry and phrases that inspire you, and so on. Even just using the notebook as a journal can provide a wealth of ideas for new writing.

New writers who have never heard of the value of a Writers Notebook, however, may have no idea what they want to use for the notebook itself, much less what they should put in it. And I've met too many new writers who have never even heard of the concept or think it will be too difficult to create or keep up. Some are so new, they have no idea what their writing needs and style are yet, much less the kinds of supports they will need. But this is part of the beauty of a binder type book: a writer can change what goes into it as his or her writing changes and his or her needs become apparent. My book, for example, is a day planner, but a binder or other type of notebook that allows you to customize it can be used as well.

As for what to keep in it, the ideas are almost endless. Most writers keep a repository of ideas, from phrases that can prompt a short story to full paragraphs and notes for possible novels. Some also keep newspaper clippings, photographs and other images, scraps of dialogue they overhear, postcards, letters, bits printed off the Internet, and so on. But a writers notebook can be used for so much more than an idea space. Other items that can be kept in it include a record of your submissions, phrases and lines you liked from other novels, ideas for character names, world building notes, research notes, project tracking, a daily writing journal, sensory notes and descriptions, freewrites, and so on. I even created a weekly planner calendar with writing related notes, from goals to accomplishments, to replace the standard planner calendar.

Once they've created a Writers Notebook, most writers find that it isn't hard to keep it up. This is where you record your accomplishments, your submissions, your goals. It becomes as much a part of your writing life as the writing itself. It goes with you everywhere so you can add your ideas as soon as they come to you. As you use it more, you begin to see what you need to add and what you don't need to keep. You adjust, making it more a part of you, more useful to you and your writing, more focused. And, eventually, you wonder how you managed without it.

Perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of being a writer is how much it relies on our ability to manage time and make sure we sit down and do the work that needs to be done. There's no time card to punch, no boss evaluating our work, no paycheck handed to us at the end of the week. It is easy to let the days slide and get little, if anything, done, especially in this day of internet distractions. There's a discipline in being a writer that must be learned. One of the best ways to learn this discipline is through setting goals. Goals not only help a writer become more disciplined in his or her writing habits, but are also a way to gage our progress. They are especially useful to new writers who are not only trying to learn the discipline of writing, but often also need to grow their writing muscles. New writers are learning to sit down each day and write, they are learning to work their writing in around the rest of their lives, and they are learning to expand how much they get done in a day. Goals help provide a target to aim for and show us when we're ready to push ourselves to do a little more.

Many writers say that goals are depressing -- they don’t meet their goals and end up with negative feelings about themselves and writing in general. I think some of this comes from a misunderstanding of how to use goals and how to set them. Goals should not be a straightjacket. They are guidance. They create a path for us to follow, and reaching the end of that path is not always required. They need to be based on our current abilities and time. If you know you can write 1000 words a day, then a good goal would 1250 words a day. This kind of goal pushes you to do more as a writer, but isn't so far out of your comfort zone that it becomes impossible to reach. They should cover the basic aspects of writing: new words, revisions, submissions. If you're a part of a critique workshop, you may also want to include critiques on the list. They also need to be goals for things you can control. How much of your work gets accepted is out of your hands since you can't control what an editor will like, so attempting to make a goal for acceptance rate is setting yourself up for failure. The first key is balance: a balance in time, a balance in ability, and a balance in what you try to achieve.

How often to set goals will depend on the writer. I set a yearly word count goal, weekly goals that cover all my writing and activities, and create a to do list each day based on those weekly goals. Others set yearly and monthly goals. Still others set their goals by the project and, using what they know to be their usual pace, create target dates for completion. Each writer must experiment with goal setting to discover what works. Which leads to the second key: use these goals as a way to guide your progress. You must allow them to be flexible enough to account for changes and disruptions, but firm enough that you don't ignore them. Use them to determine what you will do each day, but don't beat yourself over the head if you miss the mark. Perhaps they were set too high. Maybe life got in the way. Maybe you need to adjust how you set your goals. Whatever happened, don't kick yourself for not making your goals, but applaud yourself. You may not have reached the target you wanted, but you reached for something, and that is more likely to lead to success than reaching for nothing.

A fellow writer recently asked me about one of my villains. She wanted to know how I manage to write the character so well when she's a real twisted bitch. She was curious as to where the character came from--personal experience, fantasy, or a twisted imagination. While all of these have a part in the character to some degree, the one thing that really comes into play when creating characters isn’t on the list: the influence of others.

Some time back, I played role-playing games. I was fortunate enough (or unfortunate enough, depending on your point of view) to have some pretty twisted GM's who made some pretty nasty bad guys. Their NPC's were pretty twisted too, come to think of it. Nothing was ever straight forward with these characters. There was always something more going on beneath the surface--some hidden motivation, some manipulation you didn’t see coming, some plot being worked out behind the scenes. I also can’t tell you how many times I fell into their traps, despite being pretty savvy. These GM's showed me how to watch player behavior and character behavior and use it to my advantage. And when I became a GM myself, they showed me how to build twisted, devious characters of my own. Much later, when I started working on my writing more seriously, I took the lessons learned into my story characters as well.

Now some would say that a gaming influence is a bad influence on writing, and I've definitely had to learn how to edit my experiences as a player and GM. For example, I may love being a description queen, but even I will concede that a GM describing a room to his or her players needs to use far more description than a writer needs in a novel. I've had to learn to tone it down, but I would never say the gaming influence on my description was a bad one. If anything, I learned more about paying attention to details.

Writers should never turn away from an experience because it's a "bad" influence. If an experience is harmful and causes pain, some distance may be needed before that experience can be used in writing, if it ever can be, but writers should otherwise endeavor to soak up their influences. Everything we experience, from the situations in our lives to the personalities we meet, is fodder for the imagination. Passing something by because it's not acceptable, or it's not "appropriate" for writing, or whatever other reason given for it being bad, only reduces the material you have as a writer to work with. How can you create wonderfully deep, twisted characters if you haven't seen other wonderfully deep twisted characters either real or imagined? We are the sum of our experiences. When we deny ourselves the use of those experiences in our writing, we deny a part of ourselves, and our writing suffers for it.

Soaking up the influences in your life helps you to add color and depth to your writing that would otherwise not be there. It allows you to create characters who are so different from yourself that readers wonder how you write them so well.