There seems to be a general consensus among writers that it is a good idea to write all your ideas down when you get them. Despite this consensus, many writers still don’t write down their ideas, preferring to take their chances with that fickle thing we call memory. So, should we really write all of our writing ideas down?

On the one hand, yes, we really should. We are humans, and no matter how much we tell ourselves otherwise, humans forget things. We might think at the time of having an idea that it’s so good, we’ll never forget it, but the chances are that we probably will.

We can also misremember things. We might remember part of an idea we had yesterday, but other parts of it might be a little bit hazy. So we do our best to recall and eventually decide that we’ve remembered it all – but really we haven’t. The original brilliant idea is no longer intact.

Plus, when we’re working on other writing projects, there isn’t always time to develop a new idea straight away. Keeping a record of them written down somewhere can be hugely helpful when we eventually go back to all those half-formed thoughts and things we want to write about next.

However, we also need to consider how we write down those ideas. After all, writing ideas down only really helps if it all still makes sense when we go back to them later. At the time of writing it down ‘angel in the stars’ or ‘dog rules household’ might make perfect sense, but coming back to it six months later might be a different story. If you never remember why you wrote things or what you meant when you wrote them, it could be that writing down ideas doesn’t do you much good.

There is also a chance that, once written down in basic note form, those ideas don’t seem as good as they did in your head. It might in some ways be counterproductive and could lead to forgetfulness, but in some cases, keeping an idea in your head and simply letting in percolate for a while could be the best thing you could do for it.

So, in most cases it seems that writing down ideas when you have them probably is the best course of action. However, we shouldn’t always assume that this is the case, and the most important thing is to make sure you give each individual idea the justice and treatment you feel it deserves.

What do you think?