Want to peek inside my notebook...
and my planner?
There have always been notebooks
We writers have a complex relationship with paper: we hoard it or we tear through it. I have a particular brand I use for journals and drafting fiction manuscripts (A5 Tomoe River hardcover notebooks with 52g paper, unlined, not that I’m at all fussy, right?) that was discontinued for over a year. This triggered an intense hoarding spree like none I’ve ever had before. Toilet paper in 2020 could not touch my obsession with these notebooks.
Some kind soul, or businessperson who saw how many people love these notebooks revived them last year, and now I am both well supplied and calm enough to actually write in them.
How to organize a writing notebook?
There are countless resources for those who catalogue creative’s schedules and notebooks (
’s books on daily rituals and ’s brilliant dives into famous notebooks spring to mind.)As a writer who’s taught hundreds of students at this point, and who has completed and published several books, I like to think the way I keep notebooks has helped. It’s customizable and has helped my students and I with an essential task: remembering how our writing actually went when it happened.
We all have narratives about what kind of people we are. This extends to what kind of writer or artist we are, if those are pursuits we follow. If we don’t keep a few notes along the way about. how things are going, the critic will hijack these stories for its own purposes.
“You never had trouble like this with the last book? Must have been a fluke.”
”Perhaps this idea isn’t worth it. Just move on and try something else.”
”You were excited about the last essay the whole time you worked on it — something must have gone wrong with this one.”
These are all the songs our critic sings into our ears, and without backup, we often believe them.
The difference between the critic’s version of events and what we recorded in our notebooks is often so stark as to be unrecognizable. A student told me she’d gone back to look at how her writing was going at about the same phase in a previous project and was shocked.
“Who wrote all these notes in my handwriting in here?” she asked, only half joking.
Without a notebook, we’ll never remember
A couple of years ago, I led a workshop on keeping a notebook for various types of creative projects, called “Keeping a Process Journal.”
It sprung to mind this week, and so I’ve dusted it off and added it to the substack here as a gift to all paid subscribers. If you’re already a paid subscriber, click here to watch.
If you haven’t gone paid yet, here’s your chance:
Coming up on Book Alchemy
LONDON: I’m coming to see you! Let’s say hi in real life. I’ll be in the cafe at
Foyle’s Books on Charing Cross on 27 July from noon until 14:00.
BOOK GIVEAWAY: There’s another book giveaway coming in August. All annual paid subscribers are eligible. If you haven’t won a book yet, this could be your month.
In case you missed it:
A few posts I’ve written lately, and a podcast episode from the archives:1
Please note that I’ve recently decided to paywall public posts after they’ve been out for two weeks, which is when most people read and comment. This helps me to share content with those who can’t afford a subscription, while also building an archive worthy of a paid subscription. The Secret Library is not paywalled, and will remain that way.