"Always Carry a Notebook"
Recently, I've renewed the acquaintance with an old love of mine: audiobooks (Or, as we old fogies used to call them, books-on-tape, back when we used tapes). At the moment, I'm listening to a novel titled Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess (whom some of you will know better as the author of the novel A Clockwork Orange). While listening to it the other day, a sentence suddenly leapt out at me to the point where I rewound the book several times so I could write the line down:
"The little notebook in the waistcoat pocket," Samuel Butler said, "Betokens the true writer."
Given that the narrator of this novel, Kenneth Toomey, is himself a writer (both that, and a preoccupation with the nature of being a writer, being common tropes in so-called literary fiction), for him to make such a statement in the course of his narration is perfectly understandable. It got me thinking though about a piece of advice I heard many times when I was younger: that a writer--a real writer, to echo in variation the above quote--should always carry a notebook with them.
Any of you reading this who have read some of my previous writing about writing pieces know that I don't believe in absolutes when it comes to this odd job. "Everybody does it differently," and "Do what works for you," are my two constant refrains.
Speaking personally, I always carry a notebook.
I began this habit in earnest in about 2012 When my family, went back to Honduras for the first time in 11 years, rather than going through the trouble of checking my laptop through customs, I opted to carry notebooks with me. Not only did I manage to keep a journal of everything we did during our ten-day visit, but I also managed to write three new short stories (all in in longhand).
After that, I rarely went anywhere without a pocket-sized notebook on hand.
In the seven years since, I've amassed a ridiculous number of them. I keep all of them in old shoe boxes under my desk, both used and yet-to-be used. I think of them as my brain's "analog external hard-drives," to the point that if one goes missing--a rare occurrence, but a real one--I start to panic nearly to the point that Gollum panics in The Hobbit when he realizes his "precious," is missing. My memory has never been of the highest quality for most things (although it has improved with time), so keeping notebooks has helped me compensate for that which I lack.
What are in these notebooks? The answer is "various things": jottings of dialogue I've overheard, random phrases and sentences that pass through my head, potential story ideas with vague synopses and preliminary titles, passages and scenes for "works-in-progress," and even whole first drafts. There are even lines and drafts of, what I refer to as, "bits of bad verse." (That's right. Lines of terrible poetry, which will hopefully never see the light of day.)
Will everything in these notebooks end up in finished manuscripts? No, but you never know if and when these jottings might come in handy.
Many other established pros recommend this habit as well.
Joan Didion wrote a famous essay on the practice.
Neil Gaiman writes all of his first drafts in longhand, in notebooks.
Roald Dahl, author of Matilda and Charlies and the Chocolate Factory, kept a famous "ideas book," throughout his life, out of which emerged many of his famous children's stories, and J.K. Rowling in a BBC produced documentary, showed off the copious volumes of notebooks she kept prior to commencing the writing of Harry Potter.
John Irving, author of The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules, keeps a notebook, apparently, in which he amasses research pertaining to every novel he writes before he writes them.
Still, there are those who don't believe in maintaining this practice. My favorite denouncement of it, easily, has to be Stephen King's often repeated statement:
Speaking personally, I always carry a notebook.
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| A Small Selection of My In-Progress Notebooks |
I began this habit in earnest in about 2012 When my family, went back to Honduras for the first time in 11 years, rather than going through the trouble of checking my laptop through customs, I opted to carry notebooks with me. Not only did I manage to keep a journal of everything we did during our ten-day visit, but I also managed to write three new short stories (all in in longhand).
After that, I rarely went anywhere without a pocket-sized notebook on hand.
In the seven years since, I've amassed a ridiculous number of them. I keep all of them in old shoe boxes under my desk, both used and yet-to-be used. I think of them as my brain's "analog external hard-drives," to the point that if one goes missing--a rare occurrence, but a real one--I start to panic nearly to the point that Gollum panics in The Hobbit when he realizes his "precious," is missing. My memory has never been of the highest quality for most things (although it has improved with time), so keeping notebooks has helped me compensate for that which I lack.
What are in these notebooks? The answer is "various things": jottings of dialogue I've overheard, random phrases and sentences that pass through my head, potential story ideas with vague synopses and preliminary titles, passages and scenes for "works-in-progress," and even whole first drafts. There are even lines and drafts of, what I refer to as, "bits of bad verse." (That's right. Lines of terrible poetry, which will hopefully never see the light of day.)
Will everything in these notebooks end up in finished manuscripts? No, but you never know if and when these jottings might come in handy.
Many other established pros recommend this habit as well.
Joan Didion wrote a famous essay on the practice.
Neil Gaiman writes all of his first drafts in longhand, in notebooks.
Roald Dahl, author of Matilda and Charlies and the Chocolate Factory, kept a famous "ideas book," throughout his life, out of which emerged many of his famous children's stories, and J.K. Rowling in a BBC produced documentary, showed off the copious volumes of notebooks she kept prior to commencing the writing of Harry Potter.
John Irving, author of The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules, keeps a notebook, apparently, in which he amasses research pertaining to every novel he writes before he writes them.
Still, there are those who don't believe in maintaining this practice. My favorite denouncement of it, easily, has to be Stephen King's often repeated statement:
"People ask, "Do you keep a notebook?" My response is, "I think a writer's notebook is the best way...to immortalize really bad ideas.""
And he's not wrong.
I'd estimate that 70% of the jottings in my notebooks are of little to no use, and many writers who keep them admit tot this enough. One of my previous examples, Roald Dahl, explained that many of his ideas in his "ideas book," were, to use his word, "rotten," and Donna Tartt, author the The Goldfinch and The Secret History, who keeps notebooks as well, admitted in an interview that not everything she writes in her notebooks will end up in a finished book.
Yet, despite this reality, I will continue to keep notebooks because (again to refer back to one of my old mantras), doing so works for me.
Over the years, in fact, I've found the reason my memory has improved is due to me keeping the notebooks. Studies have in fact shown that there is a causal link between the handwriting of notes and improved memory retention. Evidently, the tactile, physical act of scribbling out a note, a line, a paragraph, apparently lodges that information into your brain's long term memory. Anyone who knows something about "muscle memory," where the body retains the ability to do something through the act of repetition to the point where the conscious mind no longer needs to engage for the act to take place will attest to this validity of this.
Additionally, there's something just generally enjoyable about writing something out, about shaping the ink or the lead into letters, words, and sentences (in a hopefully legible manner, so that you can interpret your scribbles at a later date). And if you enjoy something because you find it fun, why change it if you don't need to?
Again though, if writing in notebooks either doesn't appeal to you (because you concur with King's sentiment), or the act of handwriting seems too tedious for you, that's fine. Do what works for you. Writing in notebooks works for me, so I will always carry a notebook.
Yet, despite this reality, I will continue to keep notebooks because (again to refer back to one of my old mantras), doing so works for me.
Over the years, in fact, I've found the reason my memory has improved is due to me keeping the notebooks. Studies have in fact shown that there is a causal link between the handwriting of notes and improved memory retention. Evidently, the tactile, physical act of scribbling out a note, a line, a paragraph, apparently lodges that information into your brain's long term memory. Anyone who knows something about "muscle memory," where the body retains the ability to do something through the act of repetition to the point where the conscious mind no longer needs to engage for the act to take place will attest to this validity of this.
Additionally, there's something just generally enjoyable about writing something out, about shaping the ink or the lead into letters, words, and sentences (in a hopefully legible manner, so that you can interpret your scribbles at a later date). And if you enjoy something because you find it fun, why change it if you don't need to?
Again though, if writing in notebooks either doesn't appeal to you (because you concur with King's sentiment), or the act of handwriting seems too tedious for you, that's fine. Do what works for you. Writing in notebooks works for me, so I will always carry a notebook.
