It’s a Saturday morning in the middle of the month and it’s raining here, which means it’s the perfect time to get to grips with my notebook situation. I’m using twelve at the moment. This does not include the others, stuffed with ideas and scraps of my life, or the new, irresistible ones yet to be assigned a purpose.
- Oxford A4 office book: mainly for drafting blog post and stories.
- Tesco recycled paper A5 notebook: ideas for articles and random thoughts during work lunchtimes in the Landrover
- Oxford A5 office book: writing exercises, kick-starting inspiration
- Blue-plastic spiral bound A5 with index cards: the great novel!
- Pink-plastic spiral bound A5: morning pages, scribbles as I slide out of unconsciousness
- Fountain A5 cloth-clovered notebook: my bedside journal, with my end of day notes. I love this one, the feel of the cloth, the design of the cover and the watermarked detail of the paper.
- Slimline journal from the Oxford Botanics, detail inspired by illustrations of flowering plants: this comes with me whenever I have a handbag day, as opposed to my more normal pannier or rucksack day. Anything goes in here: scraps of conversation, shopping lists, to-do lists, journal fragments.
- Unlined A6-ish bendy cloth-covered notebook: the last five days of my French tour journal, together with notes on anything France-related recalled since.
- Two recycled-leather covered chunky little notebooks: covering a month each of my French cycling tour
- Red Silvine Memo book: this is for writing to-do lists.
- Tiny blue RNLI notebook with pencil. This will fit in the pocket of my jeans; if there’s no room for anything else, this will come with me.
Is this too many? They each have a purpose, but with the exception of the bedside journal, the travel journals and the novel, they can each be used for any purpose. This, really is the purpose of the end of the month tidy: to take pages from one and insert them (with a satisfying snap of elastic) into the correct one.
Can you really have too many notebooks? How many do you have? Have you got a system? Let me know!
The Kicking and Screaming bit
This increasingly seems to be a misnomer, as I’m loving my paddle in the shallows of connectivity. I am a total Twitter convert. Yesterday I caught Joanne Harris’s storytime, stories she writes on the spot in a series of tweets. I’ve found out the origin of the irritating use of ‘gift’ as a verb and been notified of some competitions I wouldn’t have found out any other way. I’ve said hello to some people and they’ve very nicely said hello back. I’ve started to tweet occasionally. There’s a world out there, and it’s wonderful. By keeping Wednesdays and Sundays phone free - and by dint of the fact that I have to work for a living (Himalayan balsam still) - I’m managing not to become addicted.
For the moment, this is enough. I’ve taken the huge step (for me) of adding a ‘Follow me on Twitter’ button to this blog. This makes me feel a little naked. Obviously, I want this to be read. I’d like to think that in time, someone will benefit from reading about my tentative online experiences. But I’m wary about shouting about this blog until I have a solid base of articles built up, and proved to the world that I can hang in there for at least a couple of months of regular posting. So the Twitter button winking in the corner there isn’t going to be seen for a while. If you are here, and you do see it, it’s probably because I’ve started to mention my blog on Twitter. Now I’m getting into a slight mental tangle about where I am and where you are in space and time, so I’m going to return to the present, to my desk on the 18th of August.
Incidentally, this is not the post I prepared. One of the first things I did when I conceived the notion of this blog was to draft eight weeks’ worth of posts. The other five are still sitting there. Six, in fact, because I looked at what I had drafted for today and decided that I didn't want to write about that topic. But I’m sure that if I hadn’t prepared the posts I’d be staring at a blank screen, and this would never have made it into the world. So if I have a piece of advice for complete beginners, it’s this: don’t, don’t, don’t get carried away by the blurb on your chosen blogger platform, the one that says ‘Set up your account with us and you’ll be blogging in minutes!’ You won’t. Take your time. Draft a solid base of posts, there to be called on when you come to sit down at your alloted blogging time, and used or not as the fancy takes you. They’ll always be in reserve. Keep adding to the reserve. If this blog is still going in three months, you’ll know that it worked for me.
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