Fair and Square -- just one line?

While in the shower just now I thought of a perfect line for my novel that ties my favorite possible title into my story and I know I will forget it in 2 hours, but I also don't want to cheat. Is it okay to write just one line to save for later?

I'm so uptight I have to follow the rules completely but I really want this line!

Some folks come up with their opening sentence before November. My basic rule is "if you can remember it and not write it down, it's not writing" which means that you haven't started early.

Is it possible for you to just jot down a word or two to remind you? Is it something that could be in an outline? A phrase is okay, but stringing together sentences is technically starting.

Some of my best ideas came as opening lines.

One year that opening line was the key to my whole novel, and became my best opening line and idea in all the years I've done Nano. (so far)

It was written on a torn piece of oily cardboard, the only thing I had to write on at the time. I did not write it on the computer, just kept it on that chunk of cardboard.

Then when I started writing on November 1st just after midnight. I created a new document and then typed in a slightly different version of the opening line (I had been revising it in my head since I came up with it about six weeks before.) and started writing.

I don't feel I cheated. I typed it in for the first time in a different form from the original notation,

Other people do major outlines and plot summaries and all that. I don't. All I did in preparation for that novel was a few short ideas in a small paper notebook and worked the rest of it out in my head. I ended with about 70K in November and finished the next September at about 140K

Personally, I don't have a problem with someone writing down one opening line. Sometimes that's all I have. And for some writers (well-known professional writers) that's how they get started on their novel.

I have no problems with that. As others have no problem with doing 20 or more pages of outlines and summaries before November.

My two cents.

Write it down, and then in November, re-write it from memory :)

I think that's fine. I outline by writing down scenes I want to happen, and if a scrap of dialogue or other line I want to use in the novel best describes that scene, i have no qualms writing it down and then using it in November.

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