A story: One day, L. M. Montgomery was leafing through an old journal and came across this entry of hers, penned a decade before: “Elderly couple apply to orphan asylum for a boy. By mistake a girl is sent them.” She started writing a tale about a red-headed orphan, intending to submit it as a seven-chapter serial for a newspaper. But Anne took on a life of her own and soon Montgomery found herself writing Anne of Green Gables.

The rest is history: Montgomery’s story was roundly rejected; she put it in a hatbox for six years, then pulled it out and attracted a publisher. The beloved novel has been translated into 35 languages and read and reread by millions of devoted children and adults (see “Airy Voices”).

Amazing to think that this wonderful story started as a humble, long-forgotten single sentence in a journal. But not all that unusual really. In Notebooks of the Mind, author Vera John-Steiner shares her research into the creative processes of noted artists and thinkers, from Einstein and Tolstoy to Marie Curie and Aaron Copeland. While she expected to find them thunderstruck by blinding flashes of inspiration, most of them described their inspiration as sparks, small ideas which they were in the habit of putting down on paper.

One of the characteristics that all these creatives had in common was how often they captured their early thoughts and “inklings” on paper. In sketches, brief journal entries, dashed-off phrases, quick observations, shreds of dialogue — they strove to catch their glimmerings — their elusive moments of insight — before they slipped back into the ether.

“Successful creators engage in an ongoing dialogue with their work,” observes Keith Sawyer in Zig Zag: The Surprising Path to Greater Creativity. “They put what’s in their head on paper long before it’s fully formed and they watch and listen to what they’ve recorded…until the right idea emerges.”

Here’s how a visual artist, Anne Sibley O’Brien (www.AnneSibleyOBrien.com) has decided to jot down images and ideas without judgment: “Draw or make notes of anything that pops into my head or catches my eye: Child gestures and expressions. Shapes that could become characters. A surprising color combination. The veins of a leaf. A perfect stone. Random marks and squiggles with no apparent meaning. Then, return to them, without demand or agenda. What do I see? What might they become?”

As writers, we can borrow a leaf from Anne’s book, and make it a point to jot down anything that pops into our head or catches our eye: An odd phrase, a random snatch of conversation, a quick word portrait of a fascinating face. Who knows? Hiding among these humble “inklings,” we might find a wonderful idea for a story — or even an entire novel. Write on!