There was a neat article in the Wall Street Journal the other day about the writing habits of some well-known novelists. I’m sure it will come as no surprise that many of them mention notebooks! Orhan Pamuk: “Mr. Pamuk writes by hand, in graph-paper notebooks, filling a page with prose and leaving the adjacent page … Continue reading How Great Novelists Use Notebooks
I recently noticed this story about Siegfried Sassoon’s notebooks being archived at Cambridge University. Sassoon was a poet who refused to return to fight after being wounded in World War I. (Read Pat Barker’s novel Regeneration for an interesting perspective on his story.) The archive contains, among other things “Sassoon’s journals [and]Â pocket notebooks compiled … Continue reading Siegfried Sassoon’s Notebooks
I thought this story was sort of funny when it popped up on MediaBistro— funny, yet horrifying! So there once was this copywriter named Aaron Robnett, who worked with Daniel Shapiro. Robnett and Shapiro toiled over client needs like creative teams do. Until Robnett left his New York agency for Boston and some sort of … Continue reading Copywriter Quits, 20 of His Notebooks Auctioned by Former Colleague
Here’s someone who is a notebook addict and a bit of a philosopher too, it seems. Many of the notebooks seem to be the red and black ones made in China and sold in stores such as Pearl River Mart in NYC. I have one in my collection that was bought in Boston’s Chinatown many … Continue reading Notebook Addict of the Week: Jack Haas
Here’s a notebook addict who used her collection to accomplish something amazing: A Wisconsin teenager named Cayla Kluver kept notebooks, lots of them. These colorful spiral notebooks are the kind you get at the local pharmacy or supermarket. Nothing fancy, but the perfect canvas for personalizing, or maybe writing a narrative. On those pages, Cayla … Continue reading Notebook Addict of the Week: A Teenage Novelist
This week’s notebook addict blogs about history at Patriots and Peoples. He says: A bit more than twenty years ago I started carrying a spiral notebook with me almost constantly. I usually wrote in it while reading—taking notes, jotting titles and authors of other texts that I planned to examine, proposing theses, writing initial drafts … Continue reading Notebook Addict of the Week: Patriots and Peoples
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 … Continue reading Do You Like Notebooks Because You Write?
I stumbled across this poem at Transformation by Dialectic and just loved it. Two Pens, One Book (for the wedding of my firstborn) A blank book begins on a pedestal. Knock it off. Spill some ink deliberately. Life is gloriously messy, let it know that you are participating! Let it know that you have both … Continue reading Poem: Two Pens, One Book
A thought-provoking quote from Mark Twain: It is a troublesome thing for a lazy man to take notes, so I used to try in my young days to pack my impressions in my head. But that can’t be done satisfactorily, so I went from that to another stage– that of making notes in a note-book. … Continue reading Mark Twain’s Notebooks
Last weekend, I read a wonderful novel called Andorra, by Peter Cameron. It’s elegantly and beautifully written, with some lush descriptions, including this scene, which takes place right at the beginning of the book, just after the narrator has arrived to start his new life in Andorra: I decided to visit the stationers. The front … Continue reading The Euphoria of Buying a Journal: Andorra, by Peter Cameron