ECLECTIC PROJECTS BLOG

If you take a quick gander at my Instagram feed, it should be pretty obvious that I am now an unapologetic notebook guy these days. A good 90% of my posts are basically me doing the pictorial equivalent of posting word-counts in a blog – tracking progress through a project by photographing page numbers. I do it there because, quite honestly, I have a pretty minimal number of Instagram followers and it’s less likely to piss people off, but also because I’ve come to appreciate the value of focusing on my process, rather than my goals. Occasionally I feel bad about doing this, but over the last week I’ve talked to a handful of people who have been inspired to the rock the analogue approach to their writing. And, since this wasn’t exactly a natural progression for me, I figured I’d put down a little advice. First, some background: I spent about fifteen years failing to write in notebooks prior to last year. I liked the idea of it. I could see the sense in working away from the computer. And, every year, there would be a sporadic attempt: I’d buy six packs of Spirax notebooks or legal pads, do about a dozen pages of notes or story drafts, then abandon them for the keyboard within the space of a week. I’m faster on a keyboard, I’d tell myself. I’m just not wired for handwriting.  When I decided to handwrite a novel draft last year, it was largely out of desperation.

I had breakfast at my local cafe this morning. It’s a habit I’m cultivating this year, on Write Club days, after realising that breakfast at my local cafe makes me extraordinarily happy and it becomes affordable within my budget if I stop buying Coke Zero. Giving up Coke Zero for something that makes me extraordinary happy is an easy trade, and so, twice a week, I trot down to the Low Road Cafe and order their avocado on toast for breakfast. There are two things I love about the Low Road’s avocado breakfast. The first is that it’s a production. It’s thick slices of doorstop toast, avocado, three different types of nuts, little slices of radish and radish flowers. Lemon juice. Freshly chopped herbs laid over the whole thing like a winter blanket. The kind of food put together by a chef who isn’t regarding their vegetarian menu as an afterthought, and enjoys the process of making tasty things. Avocado on toast is usually one of those meals that cafes do well, ’cause it’s easy, but Low Road elevates it to the point of elegance. They catch you by surprise by defying your expectations. The second thing that I love: it’s always different and it’s always delicious. The 20th century worked towards a theory of homogeneity, in some respects. Fast-food chains proliferated by offering the same experience, wherever you were, and the same expectation. The food may not be good, but it offered the comfort of the familiar and that eliminated

I went back to writing first drafts on the computer, then came back to notebooks after Christmas. The computer didn’t work for me the way it once did. It’s become the place for editing work, for doing the day-to-day stuff. It divides focus in a way that the notebooks don’t. My natural inclination is to write in short bursts: four minutes, then a pause. Five minutes, then a pause. On a computer there are more words in each burst, but longer pauses. On a notebook, I’ll frequently stop to contemplate the next step, and I’ll be back at work within a minute. I can write faster and harder on a computer, but I’ll get two or three bursts into a one-hour block. I can write for longer, on a notebook. The stops are shorter, my brain less prone to wondering. This is the effect of tracking different data, getting things more fine-tuned. Though I burn through pens like nobodies business. The graveyard of dead pens, stacking up on my coffee table, is starting to look slightly ominous. And the process of editing/rewriting the finished drafts is evil, given my previous habits.