From the Huffington Post:

The thing about opening your mind up to a new story idea is that you once you do it, there’s no going back. All of a sudden, everything seems like it has to do with the new idea. Songs and lyrics and billboards and articles and movies and books and people seem to come at me, out of nowhere, non-stop. It can be hard to breathe. I grab at all these things and try to capture them before they are lost in the noise and shuffle of life, and I do this with little notebooks.

I keep little notebooks everywhere — in my purse, in my car, on my nightstand. My favorite notebooks are the thin, soft Moleskine notebooks that come in colors, now (green and red and pink!) but they are expensive. I reluctantly bought several sets of Moleskine knock-offs at Forever 21 last year for about $1 each, which are nowhere near as inspiring, but they are serviceable.

Read more at Jennie Nash: Little Notebooks Everywhere: How the Idea for a Novel Grows.