#7 - On Keeping a Notebook
There's a lot I have to say on the subject of notebooks--of all the objects in this world, they are, to me, extremely fascinating and inspiring. But in this essay I want to discuss the writer's notebook, and the specific question of how you should keep one, if at all.
I've kept dozens of notebooks over the years--diaries of years from when I wasn't even born, notebooks made from recycled paper and purchased from thrift stores, diaries bought on birthdays as gifts to myself, and so on. I used them to note down ideas that came to me when I wasn't writing, and to brainstorm characters and story titles. Sometimes, I'd see a scene clearly in my head---even though I didn't know what the rest of the story was---then rush to jot it down before I forgot it. I've also, in various notebooks, made notes on the craft of writing, lists of magazines I wanted to get published in, calculations of word counts and article payments, and so on. I enjoyed flipping through the pages I'd filled, reading and rereading what I'd written, scratching out old calculations and ideas I was no longer interested in pursuing.
However, a few months ago I recognized that while notebooks were a good tool to save ideas before I lost them, they didn't work well for me if I went to them first instead of the blank page. Making notes isn't writing--writing is writing.
When I look back upon all the notebooks I've kept throughout my life (some even before I actually started writing regularly), they haven't really served me. Of the hundreds of pages of ideas and material, I've hardly made use of about twenty or thirty of them. Usually these were additions to pieces I was already working on, or ideas that hadn't left me in a long while. Everything else has went unused.
This is mostly because when I note down an idea, I feel very excited about its potential--I've often gotten carried away for several minutes, if not an entire hour, expanding upon an idea by making notes and creating outlines. Once I'm done, I've found that I rarely actually write that story or essay--all my enthusiasm gets exhausted in the planning and imagining.
And part of the fun of the writing is that when I begin with a premise (when writing a story) or a question (when writing an essay), I don't know what I've got to say or where the writing will take me. I'm much like the reader here, in that I don't know what's going to happen next, but unlike the reader, I get to enjoy the fun of being the first to discover whatever lies ahead.
When I plan everything before I start writing--when I know how the story ends or what the answer is--I don't write because I already know. And where's the fun in spending time on what you already know?
It took me seven and a half years to recognize why all that notebooking failed me---I enjoyed not knowing, and I loved making discoveries through the simple process of putting down word after word. Perhaps that's also why I have resisted learning much about plots over the years. I don't want to think in tables and outlines; I just want to write (and when you write, you are thinking, so it's not as if you can skip it).
These days, although I do have a notebook, I don't use it for notes. When I'm out and about and get an idea, I quickly send a message to myself on WhatsApp--a title, a phrase, a question, nothing more. When I'm home, I open my notebook and start writing the first draft. (Sometimes I do it on the laptop, but we'll talk about writing by hand vs on screen in a different essay).
This is a very new habit for me; I started it recently after reading Ray Bradbury's interview with The Paris Review, especially this excerpt below:
INTERVIEWER
Do you keep a notebook?
BRADBURY
No. As soon as I get an idea, I write a short story, or I start a novel, or I do a poem. So I have no need for a notebook. I do keep files of ideas and stories that didn’t quite work a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago. I come back to them later and I look through the titles. It’s like a father bird coming with a worm. You look down at all these hungry little beaks—all these stories waiting to be finished—and you say to them, Which of you needs to be fed? Which of you needs to be finished today? And the story that yells the loudest, the idea that stands up and opens its mouth, is the one that gets fed. And I pull it out of the file and finish it within a few hours.
Earlier in the interview, Bradbury is asked about his schedule, to which he responds:
My passions drive me to the typewriter every day of my life, and they have driven me there since I was twelve. So I never have to worry about schedules. Some new thing is always exploding in me, and it schedules me, I don’t schedule it. It says: Get to the typewriter right now and finish this.
I've been following Bradbury's method for about a couple of weeks now, and so far, it's served me well--I've certainly written way more than I do when I simply sit with a notebook and come up with ideas--which, again, is not the same thing as writing.
For example, just the other day I explored my thoughts on what essays are, really, as if I were addressing a reader and I ended up with a two-page essay that I'm very happy with. A few months ago, I'd have made a mindmap, then never wrote anything based on it.
Notebooks are fancy and romantic and aesthetic, and they're certainly worth maintaining in our digital era, if only for the old-school charm and some uninterrupted thinking. But when it comes to writing, I wish I'd learned sooner that the romantic nature of notebooks can also be a distraction.
And so I would recommend that when an idea strikes you (and if you have the time), write the piece then and there. Later is a myth; it never arrives. I wish my younger self had understood this, and used her enthusiasm to actually write the first draft, instead of thinking about writing or planning to write. My notebooks would have been filled with much better material had I started this habit sooner.
Perhaps I should put a post-it on the cover of my notebook to remind of this lesson: Write that draft immediately. Do it the Bradbury way.