If you have a shower cabinet with a glass door, rather than a curtain, you can use your finger to write in the steam on the door. Of course, you would probably have already tried that if you had such a door. If the room gets steamy enough, you might jump out of the shower to write on the mirror, though that sounds chilly.

Maybe you could hang a mirror in the shower. Or a whiteboard - I bet if hung at the right spot, high enough not to get directly wet, you could use whiteboard markers. Though you'd want to test them in steamy circumstances.

Like Jill, I was going to suggest a dry-erase board on the far wall of your shower from the shower head. It ought to be waterproof enough for temporary note-taking, I'd think.

Is Etch-a-Sketch waterproof?

You might be able to keep a small tape recorder right outside the shower. Just remember to try your hands before operation.

This discussion Suggests underwater slates used by divers and bathtub crayons for children. Not that I could say where to get such things.

Looks like I can't follow directions: http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Shower_20Writing_20Kit

"If you have a shower cabinet with a glass door, rather than a curtain, you can use your finger to write in the steam on the door."

Ha! Man, I do this all the time. Doesn't work that well once you turn the water off. Of course, you could always set up a waterproof terminal in there. But from a quick google, waterproof computer parts are pretty expensive. There are also waterproof PDA keyboards...now if you could get a waterproof PDA...

I used to keep a dry erase pen to write on my mirror, for just this reason. In fact, I really wanted one today as my brain kept listing things we need to buy, or things we need to do in the next couple of days. Let me know what you come up with.

We actually have a window in our shower (sadly, this is the apartment's most distinctive architectural feature). I wonder if a dry-erase pen would work on that?

Judging by Erika's link and other responses here there's quite a community of potential shower writers out there. Maybe we should form an organization to lobby for basic research into the necessary technologies. Or else take matters into our own hands and form a start-up. Think of the marketshare we could get with the right patent.

We use dry erase markers on the mirror all the time. Don't see why it wouldn't work in the shower, either on a cheap shaving mirror (with suction cups) or on the window ...

I have hard good things about this shower board:

http://tinyurl.com/4d6j7

Recommended in the sidebar here, with other productivity items:

http://www.43folders.com/

Matt,

Most of the responses so far have been to the writing aspect of the shower experience.

Tackling the memory aspect, one might want to engage in a quotidien practice where retrieval of the composed sentence(s) is improved over a given period of time. Practice is the key. Start small. Say a phrase or sentence of less than ten words.

The acomplishment of the exercises could become the subject of a weekly blog entry much like those that report on running or gymn exeperiences.

Composing without a writing affordance is akin to composing for oral recitation. Interestingly, after a few days of such exercises involving a delay between the act of composition and the physical inscription of the composed elements you may find your sentence structure affected. You may also find that your body inscribes those composed bits or rather that body image can be harnessed to the task of retrieval. For example, sentence one becomes associated with the thumb and sentence two with a toe. Renews one's sense of digital encoding. Holding in mind an image of a verbal or other textual artefact tatooed to one's skin also is a very effect mnemonic.

To write is not necessarily to physically inscribe in a medium outside the body's proprioception.

There's a poem about this, specifically about losing poem words... I believe it suggests shouting it to your wife and muttering it to yourself until it runs in your head like a tune, in addition to the writing on the mirror trick. I do especially like the last one (constant repetition until it's basically an earworm); I have my best thoughts in the shower too, and that's how I remember them long enough to get them down. This is particularly good when composing full sentences, since any changes you make to them while memorizing will probably improve their flow, due to the semi-musical nature of the memorization process. I find that sometimes, when writing poems, I remember a line differently than the way I actually wrote it down, and it's invariably preferable to change it to the remembered version.

That said, I also just saw bath crayons at Walgreen's. This might be a good excuse to get some.

A common blackboard and chalk just out of the way of the spray?

I don't get ideas in the shower, but while walking or driving. I need to get one of those MP3 players with a microphone, to wear around the neck like jewelry, so I can catch the brilliant thoughts I have while walking home from work. Only home/downhill though, walking uphill always gives me bleak, angry thoughts.

Turn on a recorder before you go into the shower, and speak your sentences out loud enough?