I think it is something all writers have done at some time or another. You’ll be out, away from your computer, and you’ll suddenly be struck by inspiration. A brilliant idea for your next novel/short story/poem/article/other miscellaneous writing project will hit you. You’ll be really excited about it – it’s the bit of inspiration you’ve been looking for.

But you’ve forgotten your notebook, and you don’t have a pen so you can’t even write it on your hand. You tell yourself that this idea is so great, you’ll still remember it by the time you get back home. There’s no way you can forget it.

By the time you get back home, the idea has gone. All that you have left is the memory that you did have an idea, but what it was, you no longer have any clue.

We’ve all done it.

Of course, in the days of posh smartphones and fancy portable tablet computers, this isn’t quite the issue it once was. If you don’t have a notepad and pen with you, it’s much less likely to be a problem when you’re suddenly struck with a great bit of writing inspiration. You’ll probably still have some way of noting it down.

But still, there’s something reassuring and comforting about a notebook filled with ideas; it’s more personal somehow than all the technology we can use to record things these days. And no matter how wonderful all this technology is and how useful it can be, there’s still that small fear that even once we’ve written a note using a smartphone app, it won’t be there when we want to access it again. We have more control over paper and pen (even if not over the quality of our handwriting, which can render even the most clearly-defined idea illegible upon re-reading, as I think many people will be familiar with).

At the heart of it, I suppose it’s not really about the notebook and pen. Sure, it’s great to carry them with you wherever you go so no matter what happens, no matter what idea you get, where you get it or what technical malfunctions you may suffer rendering your phone-recording capabilities void, you’ll always be able to note down your ideas. But what this is really about is making sure we do note things down, however we decide to do so.

Ideas might seem big and permanent when we have them, but they can vanish again just as easily. You can wake up in the night with a fantastic, fully-formed idea that in the morning, after several more hours of sleep and nothing tangible to refer back once you wake up, makes very little sense. Maybe you’ll get the idea back, maybe you won’t.

It doesn’t seem worth taking the risk though. So however you choose to do it – notepad and pen, smartphone, tablet, computer, voice-recorder, memory exercises – don’t let your ideas go by unrecorded. It might help save us all a lot of writerly frustration.