Or do you write because you like notebooks?
“Girl with A Notebook” ponders the question “How has writing affected your life?”
One of the seemingly obvious answers would be that I spend a lot more time alone since I’ve started writing, preferring the company of my keyboard to the company of my classmates… or did I start writing because I was forced to spend a lot more time alone, because my keyboard suddenly became my only company? I’m not sure which way that goes.
Same goes for my obsession with office supplies — notebooks, post-it notes, pens, paperclips, paper, pencils, erasers, notebooks… But then again, do I like office supplies because I write, or do I write because I like office supplies?
via Girl With a Notebook: Blog Chain: How Has Writing Affected Your Life?.
Oh, that’s a good one – a kinda pens & stationery ‘chicken or egg’ sort of a question, I’ll have to think about this…
I like notebooks (and I really do) because I write.
I feel they enable me. They’re a conduit, a capillary and help draw out certain kinds of ideas and thoughts. Using them is different enough than keyboarding and when I use a fountain pen, it’s as if the ink is the lifeblood of ideas. Very rewarding. I have 2 moving boxes of notebooks going back to 1995 (Yikes!) and can’t help myself, when in a stationary store, I see one that’s different.
Oh, I think of it as part of the whole process. If you like writing, you’ll like the whole experience, including the media you use, the process, whatever. If you don’t like writing, notebooks won’t count to you. Thats’ my theory anyway. But the important thing is that I love both of them!
I like notebooks because they represent the potential… I have had a really hard time writing in them for a few years, but I keep buying more and more books with the idea that when I get past this idea I will have somewhere to write. I currently have about 35 blank books waiting to be written in, 5 on the go (1 journal, 1jot book, 1 daytimer/diary, 1 book of lists, and 1 doodle book)….
See here
http://frozennowhere.com/?p=458
I definitely use notebooks because I’m a writer. I was compelled to write at an early stage, before it even occurred to me to think about what I was writing in or with.
For me, good notebooks and pens are simply about creating a good atmosphere for pouring your thoughts out of your head. Just as it’s best to have a good “spot” to write in, a good notebook and a pen are, in a sense, nothing more than an aid to concentration, a clearing out of all obstacles and distractions that would impede the writing process. The paper and pen lie much closer to the heart of the writing act than one’s music or chair, obviously — the right notebook can turn a mundane writing experience into a positively magical one — but it is destructive of creativity to think of them as any more then tools.
I read a lot about people who are afraid to write in their fancy new journals because their thoughts don’t feel “worthy” of the medium. I never had that problem, and I’m pretty sure people who do have the wrong idea about what a notebook is for. For me it starts with having something to write in the first place — something you are compelled to give birth to, to preserve, in at least some kind of rough, unfinished form. Then I think, what kind of book would I want to put this in? So you buy the book and start writing. If you really have nothing to write about but grocery lists, then no notebook is going to inspire you, it will only intimidate you.
(Every writer should read the chapter about the painter in “The Great Divorce.” by C.S. Lewis)
Interesting question. My answer is…both. I love the craft of the journal, the binding, the paper quality, the cover design, etc. and all of these components inspire me to write.
But I would always find a way to write even if all I had was a pen and a napkin to write on. So I like to write and as a result am always searching for something to wrote on/in and thus I love notebooks.
-V.D. :)
I write because I like notebook… just dont know why, I just have an obsession on notebooks, and not to use them seams like a crime…
Count me among the “write because I like notebooks” camp. I have loved notebooks and journals since I was very young — I have no idea why — and since what one does with notebooks is write in them, that’s what I do, filling them up as fast as I can so I can move on to the next one.
Six of one, half-dozen of the other. It’s a sort of reinforcing feedback loop: wanting to write leads me to buy a notebook, which once I have it makes me want to fill it, which makes me wonder about a *different* notebook or a new idea requiring a separate one, lather, rinse, repeat.