Country singer Hayes Carll talks about how certain kinds of notebooks make you think you’ll fill them with great stuff… sounds like he’s a notebook addict!

 

Do you keep a journal now?

I’m pretty bad about it. I have a certain embarrassment over my own writing. It’s odd, because it’s the thing that no one will ever see. There’s something about putting down my thoughts and feelings in a journal. I immediately self-edit, which sort of defeats the purpose. So I’ll give it a go and then put it down for six weeks.

I’m an obsessive notebook collector, though. Notebooks and pens. It’s my idea of a clean start. Whenever I want to work on anything—whether it’s a to-do list or a journal or a new songs—I’ll go to Office Max. That’s really my nirvana. That first page is a blank slate. There always seems to be some control in that, like, “I can do better with this notebook.” As a result, I have a house full of thousands of notebooks, and each one has four pages of shit in it.

Those nice Moleskine notebooks are especially good at inducing that optimism.

Yeah, the exterior is nice and significant and has weight, and therefore the stuff that goes in it should match it—and has the potential to! And then you get started and you think, God, this is not worthy of its cover. I have a pretty expensive closest full of nice notebooks.

Read more at An Interview With Country Singer Hayes Carll – After Hours Blog (washingtonian.com).