Notebooks. Hoarder or Curator?

I’m not sure if I’m alone in the writing world where I have piles of notebooks. I think I could be a hoarder but I prefer the term collector or curator. I’m attracted to notebooks in the way some might find themselves drawn to bakery items, or shoes, cars, perfume and a myriad of other attractions. Or distractions!

I was the sort of kid who loved the beginning of the school year so I could cover and label my pristine class books. If truth be told I felt the same way as a teacher setting up my shiny chronicle and diary with my name written in cursive, so full of optimism and promise. So now as a writer I’m still adoring the inside covers with name, purpose and perhaps a fancy little sticker.

And I fill these notebooks with same flair and burgeoning potential. Each one is about ideas. Some specific to the book I’m writing where I plan chapters, write about character backgrounds, make relationship trees, glue pictures of the potential settings and ultimately scheme the downfall or survival of the personas involved. Each book details some of the research for the story. Sometimes it’s a deep Google dive, other times its interviews I enforce on patient and frequently bewildered friends.

Importantly each on holds a couple of gems. Things like the conclusions, witticisms and wisdom that I hope will come through the story as it unfolds. Flashes of conversations I’ve heard, phrases that resonate and a smattering of daily observations of the unsuspecting public behaving wonderfully or badly. Notebooks are great places to compile the data gathered from people watching. Which is virtually a sport and should be considered for Olympic selection!

Now I know it’s very old fashioned to take notes with a pen and paper but there is something glorious about the tactile nature of scratching one’s musing by hand. Ink, pencil and colour spread across a thousand pages standing as proof of the writer I see myself as. There are arrows and boxed thoughts, indecipherable scribbles and the occasional simple drawing that would have so little meaning to the outsider. But the scrawl, and occasionally a little glorious calligraphy, are all part of my process. I travel with at least one notebook, sometimes two if I can squeeze them in to some corner of my suitcase or backpack. Maybe its purpose is just as an aide-mémoire. Sometimes in a quiet moment I will write an entire chapter, or blog or short story. Or even capture an entirely new idea for a book yet to take form in my mind but is reflective of possibility. Everything, everywhere and everyone is a story and capturing the moment is not only important, it is exquisite.

Some writers keep a notebook by their bedside to capture the thoughts and plots and machinations that emerge from dreams. Some write into the night, others at sun up, many over a lazy lunch and a nice glass of something. I make notes when I’m happy, when I’m wounded (usually emotionally, but occasionally when actually injured), when angry or in disbelief at human carelessness. I make lists of things to be achieved, to be grateful for, to do and not to do and every now and then the ‘revenge list’! Usually under the heading If Only They Let Me Rule the World. I’ve also taken to writing letters, that remain unsent, but speak to my deeper hurts, resentments, joys and hopes.

I write in a rainbow of pen colours…I’d like to pretend that I’m clever enough to say each symbolises a kind of thought or idea but it’s simply as the muse takes me. Or what I grab first. I have coloured pencils, and felt tips for drawing images, and defining mind maps, lists and tables. I’m a big fan of organisational tools although sometimes the ideas come so fast I’ve not got time to order them. Some pages are written around the borders, on the diagonal and from the bottom up. I do wonder what graphologists on stylometrists might say if they got their hands on them. Not to mention what a forensic document examiner might say. I think Max Pulver, a Swiss psychoanalyst and poet, would have a field day. (He introduced the concept of spatial symbolism, where he thought how words were placed on a page (upper/lower zones) relates to the writer’s conscious and unconscious mind, ego, and relationship to society.

(Seriously can’t stop reading about his theories…did you know the left side of the page is linked to the ‘mother’ and attachment to the past!!! Analyse yourself people!)

But I digress as another rabbit hole calls me…graphology is another notebook waiting to be filled.

But in essence, I love a notebook. I like them glossy, matt, lined, parchment-like, plain, coloured, textured, graphically eye-catching…with or without page ribbons or elastic bands, leather-bound with quirky locks, thick, thin and with secret pockets tucked into the back covers. I am a curator, a collector and perhaps when it comes time to leave life behind my kids will say in the eulogy…she hoarded notebooks.

But I do hope before they are summarily disposed of someone will take a look inside and conclude that these hand-scribbled tomes were made by a mad woman or a genius. Or simply say…she was a writer.

Keep a notebook. Travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that flutters up into your brain. Cheap paper is less perishable than gray matter. And lead pencil markings endure longer than memory. Jack London (Novelist)