At some times, taking your regular style of notes doesn't seem to work, say, if you're following a large group discussion. How do you keep track of the themes of the discussion, what who is saying what, and so on? If you're artistically inclined, you might want to drop the tape recorder and give graphic facilitation a try.

I learned about this after participating in an authors' roundtable. A designer named Brandy Agerbeck showed us her notes on the discussion, which were presented in an organized yet lovely way. (There are other examples of graphically-noted discussions here.)

"I'm not a note taker," says Brandy, who came up with her version during college. "I have a very strong memory but I think this is a good way of organizing thoughts." Brandy, when mapping out ideas, uses a standard library of images (sort of if you came up with your own version of shorthand), using them to sort out the basic structure to reflect a conversation.

Brandy credits Tony Buzan's Mind Mapping as one of her influences. "You group things by ideas: big ideas go together, so do the small ones." A visual outline, if you will.

So which writers could benefit from trying graphic facilitation? If you don't trush your artistic skills to keep track of a large discussion the way Brandy does, this could work well for novelists who are trying to outline their book. "I use graphic facilitation when my brain is too full and my ideas seem important but don't fit together yet," says Brandy. Yeah, that sounds like something a writer can identify with.