“What is he carrying in his pocketses?” Or, the Current State of the Notebook Wodge

Whenever I go deep into notebook mode, there’s inevitably a point where someone catches a glimpse of my bag and comments on its contents. This, it should be noted, is completely understandable – I’m working relatively light at the moment, and when I emptied my backpack and pockets this morning I was still carrying around 9 different notepads and an assortment of pens. They make for a pretty impressive wodge of works-in-progress.

For those curious about such things, here’s a rough breakdown of what I’m carrying around at any given time, starting at the bottom and working my way up:

WAIL NOTEBOOK (Brand X 80 page Pressboard Notebook, Blank): . It’s being used to draft the third Miriam Aster novella, and I wanted something cheap and relatively durable to use instead of my usual hardcovers. The logic behind this was simple – I’ve started and failed to write a third Aster book for a decade now, and the weight of all those unfinished drafts builds up when I’m working on something new. If I put this in something that felt like a Moleskine or Leuchtturm, it would feel like real work and the weight of all those unfinished drafts would start dragging the project down. So I hit my local Officeworks and picked up the cheapest, blank-page notebook I could find that seemed like it would fit my itinerant work process.

I honestly expected to hate working in this notebook. For one thing, I’m not a big fan of spiral bindings given their tendency to bend or warp while getting lugged around with the rest of the wodge. For another thing, packaging only promised 80 blank pages, which meant it felt a little overpriced (ignore the wonky consumer psychology at work here). It turns out that Brand X, unlike pretty much every other notebook company on sale at the ‘Works, only counts every two-sided sheet as a single page, so there’s actually twice the amount of space I thought I was getting.

Generally I aim to write a page a day in this one, but this is a misleading measure of the work that takes place given that I’ll frequently spend a page or two brainstorming a coming scene before I start. The larger size means that the novella advances at a fair clip, but finishing a page isn’t a daunting amount of work.

If the spiral binding survives a month or two of being lugged around in my backpack without too much damage, it’s highly probably I’ll pick up ore of these to use in a similar fashion.

BULLET JOURNAL (Leuchtturm Medium Hardcover, Grid): The blue hardcover is my bullet journal, which carries a lot of the weight in terms of scheduling, brainstorming, tracking notes, and short-term research. Theoretically, if I were following the bullet journal protocol religiously, every damn thing in this wodge would be getting logged there, but I suspect I’d end up filling a journal in the space of a fortnight given the pace some of these projects advance.

I converted to grid-ruled bullet journals a few years back, after seeing Kathleen Jennings BuJo layouts and admiring how neat they were. Three quarters of my family gets together at Christmas and compares BuJo experiences, especially after Moleskine discontinued their grid notebooks in the size my mother prefers, which eventually led us all to the Leuchtturm as our brand of choice (although my sister remains an outlier, preferring dotted over the grid).

MEDIAN SURVIVAL TIME Notebooks 1 & 2 (Moleskine 80 Page Large Cahier Notebook, Ruled): I went through a period where I picked a whole bunch of these via Book Depository, since they tend to come in three-packs and 80 pages tends to be a good amount for novella work. One notebook tends to fit about half a novella draft, more or less, and it gives me a visual representation of the pacing when I start flipping through chapters.

In the rare period where I’m actually carrying around two of these, as I’m a half-dozen pages away from finishing the first notebook devoted to this project and moving onto the next.

RESEARCH JOURNAL (Moleskine Oxide Green Large Ruled Notebook, Hardcover): If I’m honest, I largely forget that I’m carrying this one around much of the time, as I’ll only break it out two or three times a week. It’s the place where I do a lot of my “business thinking” research, dumping ideas and brainstorming as I flip through various books on creative industry, management, and career building. I don’t tend to reread this stuff all that often – it’s main purpose lies in being alert while doing the actual reading, taking a few moments to process ideas in my own words or relate them to something I’m already thinking about.

SHORT FICTION NOTEBOOK (New Pink Leuchtturm Medium Notebook, 249 numbered pages, Blank): Probably the newest notebook in the pile, picked up last year when I started experimenting with unruled pages instead of getting fussy about my preferred line rule in notebooks (although anything taller than 7mm rule makes me twitch and leaves me unlikely to purchase or use a notebook). Largely being ignored at the moment, given there’s two novellas taking up the bulk of my writing time (and one has a deadline attached), but the moment I leave it out of the wodge I’m pretty much guaranteed to start filling the Bullet Journal with story drafts.

I’m decidedly uncertain about the Leuchtturm as a writing notebook. Lots of people seem to rave about them, and I’m a convert for the bullet journaling, but it’s slightly bigger size and the tendency to number at the bottom of the page both leave me feeling disconcerted. I find the process of numbering notebooks by hand very calming, particularly when thinking through what’s coming next.

WRAITH AND COMPANY NOTES (J. Burrows Notebook a5 80 Page Notebook): This is the knock-off brand of the 80-page Moleskine Cahiers notebooks that I’m using for the Median Survival Time novellas above, coming in at a third of the price (if you’re buying retail), a slightly lesser paper quality, and a glued spine instead of the stitched spine Moleskine uses at that size. It’s housing the early thinking for a series of books I plan on writing sometime in 2019 or 2020, making use of some of the lessons I’ve learned from doing my thesis. Once finished, it’ll contain all the brainstorming that serves as a kind of series bible, although it won’t be anywhere near that organised.

It looks like this particular knock-off has been discontinued – the J. Burrows line has recently expanded their range of pseudo-Moleskines and cut back on the original offerings. It’s not a huge loss – the new journals are considerably better, and the paper on these was a little too slick if you’re using fountain pens or gel-ink pens. Still, they were cheap and easily disposable, which meant they were good at getting past the initial hurdle of “is this idea worthy of a whole notebook yet?”

BRAINDUMP NOTEBOOK (Avid Reader Pocket Moleskine, Blank Pages): A few years back I discovered that one of our local bookstores, Avid Reader, had their own branded line of Moleskines with the store logo on the cover. I picked one up when I found myself there for an event, sans notebook I could use to scribble things in while I waited, and it’s been serving as my on-the-go notebook for the better part of two years now. It’s the place where things get dumped on the rare occasions that I’m unable to take a bullet journal with more, or simply cannot be arsed getting a Bujo out. I generally avoided pocket-sized notebooks prior to this one – they never really felt like they had enough room – but getting one with blank, unruled pages was something of a revelation.

BRAINDUMP NOTEBOOK 2 (Moleskine Cahier Pocket Ruled Notebook Black): Pocket-sized and narrow lined, I tend to tuck a second 80-page notebook in with the Avid Reader Moleskine for on-the-go notes that aren’t necessarily writing based. While the notebook above will usually include notes that spill over a couple of pages, this one is almost always a distinct idea that fills one page at most – crude story structures sketched out, notes on word counts, shopping lists, two line notes based upon things I’m reading or thinking (What exactly is a Grand Guignol? Would I be more satisfied using the internet like it was the 90s again, writing actual email letters instead of social media?)