Categories
notebooks

A Journal Mindset

The old and the new.

When I started college back in 2003, I was dropped off at the campus in the morning and took multiple buses to get home. I had a cell phone, but in those days, cell phones were primarily for calling; texting in a numpad was frustrating (even when you “got gud”) and made writing anything longer than brief messages just wasn’t a thing. For me, anyway.

So when I bought my first Moleskine notebook at the mall, the halfway point between school and home, I used that for my first serious journal; I still have that one tucked away in a box somewhere. And I loved the feel of that book, so much so that I’ve used Moleskine books for lots of different projects.

Six months ago, I started a new journal. And last night, I finished it. After six straight months of journaling, I can say… much as I’ve failed in the past at maintaining a journal, I’m all for it now.

Categories
gifts notebooks

A Word For Expensive Notebooks

I was walking through the local Barnes & Noble recently, and there are a few parts of that store I always have to explore: literary fiction, manga/graphic novels, and reference books (I need to learn how to edit longer work more efficiently, I admit). But on my way out, there’s that space where they keep the greeting cards and fancy notebooks, and I’ve been drawn into that space more times than I can remember.

Touching the covers of a beautiful, empty, lines-properly-spaced notebook, reading the quotes in typewriter type printed across or wrapping around, they’re all beautiful little snowflakes. At least, until I find the price tag on them and practically snowball them back onto the shelf.

I have a theory. Not just about myself, but about most writers… we have a love/hate relationship with expensive notebooks. We love to look at them, we love to imagine the stories that should be written in them, but we hesitate to mark them up with a possible failure. And EVERY story started is a possible failure.