(Edith) Wharton always kept a donnée book (a French word meaning the nascent elements of a story) in which she recorded the plot outlines, little one-liners, social critiques, and clever analogies that would someday be used in one of her books.
Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors, Sarah Stodola (shop)
Manuscript notebook with names of characters, pieces of dialogue; excerpts of what would become The House of Mirth.