An Ode to Notebooks
Here’s the thing: No matter how small and handy laptop computers and tablets are getting, I love physical notebooks. You know, the ones with paper pages that you write on with a pen? Yeah, those.
A selection of my writing notebooks. Some are for one specific project, others contain various short stories and ideas.
Whenever I get an idea for a new story project, I like to find a suitable notebook for it. That way I can assign pages to the plot, descriptions of the world and the characters and to random thoughts and ideas related to the project (sometimes I do have notes for two or three stories in one book, though).
Writing notes in a book is somehow rewarding. As much as I love writing and editing novels on my computer, there is something almost intimate and inspiring about flipping through pages of handwritten notes.
A funny trend I’ve noticed in myself is switching from A4 sized notebooks to smaller ones (my current one is A6). I think it’s because I used to take them with me for actual story writing in cafés and at write-ins with my critique group, but now I have a laptop for that, so it’s more practical to have a small notebook that I can stuff into a little bag and bring with me anywhere I go. That way, I can always jot down ideas.
Do you keep a physical notebook? If you have one, do you write stories in it as well as ideas?
Marie Howalt’s Sporadic Blogging 
Nice to know I’m not the only one who does this. Though I think I have a bit of a collecting problem – I have probably a dozen blank notebooks that are just waiting to be filled and I keep buying more because there’s so much excitement and potential in them!
But I do also write in some, including a general journal for ideas and observations, and then project-specific ones.
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Thanks for the comment, Nathanael! It’s not the worst collecting problem to have, I think. Notebooks are very useful. Now I feel encouraged to buy even more. 😉
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I usually have a ton of blank notebooks lying around. I use them mostly as diaries and for writing down ideas quickly. I don’t normally devote whole notebooks to a project anymore because I use the computer for that.
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Because I’m not usually far from my computer, I don’t keep a notebook around me. I used to, but I’m terrible of keeping track of more things than I have pockets for, so I often loses them. Nowadays, I store whole worlds in my brain, and only jot down minor details like languages and lines. I guess it’s just because of the age I grow up in that I find memorizing better than notebooks, though I often find myself looking back on stories and stuff to find certain informations.
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Thanks for the input! 🙂 I think I store a lot in my mind too. At least there is a lot of stories and ideas that I’ve not written down, but they’re still in there (maybe waiting for me to process them enough to write them?).
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