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.