I always carry a notebook near me.

Why? Because I am porous. If I don’t write it down:

a) it didn’t happen.
b) it ain’t going to happen.
or
c) any creative downpour or aha moment will escape into the ether like bubbles from a shaken bottle of cheep beer.

I have tried using my iPhone to capture this stuff. And there are a staggering swag of apps to help me do it. But that is the problem….they just don’t do it.

For creative capture in flagrante delicto you just cannot beat pen and paper.

” If the muse comes to your bedside, don’t tell her you’ll fuck her later.”- Allen Ginsberg

There are stack of blogs dedicated to the self-indulgent snobbery of notebook jotting and journalling workflows (eg here, here and here), so Im not going to go there. Im not going to tell you how I used to use a bigger A5 Moleskin notebook, but now favour a small A6 Leuchtturm1917 pocket book. Or how I use a specific set of written symbols to help me organise todo lists and information (don’t even get me started on bullet journaling). Or how I totally prefer using a UniPin fine line 0.5 pen but will settle for a 0.7 in a pinch.
That would just be nauseatingly tedious.

Instead I will let this quote from the 1907 Methodist Review ring out like a bell:

“Have upon your study table, always accessible, a good-sized substantially bound blank book. Whenever a germinant thought comes seize your pen and write it down. Such thoughts will come out of your special course of literary reading, out of your cursory scanning of current fiction, even out of the five-minute glance given to the morning paper, out of nowhere and from anywhere. Thought-compelling suggestions entirely foreign to the sermon on which you are just now engaged will frequently send you to your treasure book, and without any damage to present preparation you will scribble down a page of matter that will set you on fire at some future day just when you are in need of inspiration and help. Have also a special vest-pocket notebook and let nothing escape you.” –The Methodist Review (via the art of manliness)

And there you have it.
Go analogue. Start using a notebook. Capture those germinants. Always be ready to combust.