I came across this article on Salon.com, “Nicholson Baker’s best advice: Writers must write every day.” That a writer should write every day is not new advice. I came up with Writing Wednesday to force myself to write more often. But every day just seems really intimidating. In the article, Baker admits that sometimes he counts writing an email or a text as writing.

I have been writing more. Last week, I planned to take off Wednesday, but I wrote on Monday and Tuesday instead. And if I relax the rules like Baker, it would be much easier. If I count classwork and certainly if I count Twitter, I would say I am writing probably every day.

Baker also suggests carrying around a notebook, which isn’t a particularly revolutionary idea either. The reason he suggests to do it is different though. He states, “if you’re reading along and you come to something that’s really beautiful, that really stops you in the eye with its prose, you see it’s true, then I’ll stop or make a note to stop later and open the notebook and copy it out, in quotation marks, of course, and write down – copy that out word for word, with full punctuation, in handwriting. And the reason that’s useful is it slows you down and helps you understand the rhythm of the prose and how a person constructed something that opened up in your mind in just that way.”

I have phrases or passages that catch my eye, but I don’t necessarily stop and study them like this. I almost never copy them down. If I did, like Baker suggests, I imagine it would make me a better writer.

Since I am a writer that has grown up largely in the digital age, it may not actually be a notebook. Maybe my notepad on my phone, my laptop, or even my chalkboard wall (okay, I realize that isn’t digital.) I do plan to start doing this. If nothing else, I will have quick access to a cache of my favorite words.