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Now
where's
my notebook?
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Why
A Notebook?
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Better than
file pads which have the smog of academe about them. |
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You may screw
up and throw away your best ideas |
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You loose the
time sequenced record of your ideas and your writing. |
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You loose a
tool which allows you to reflect on your progress. |
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Better than a
computer because your writing hand is more closely attached to your
brain. |
Setting
About Using It
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Buy your
notebooks in sets of – say – three, six or nine. This shows good intent, and that you feel your
writing has a future.
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Customise them.
Label the front. Stick on images that mean something to you. Number
the pages – facing pages only. Later – if you give each piece of
work a title you can index the notebook for future reference. Customising the notebook takes away their strangeness, makes
them yours so they
are easier to write in.
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At first, only
work in one notebook at a time. Don’t spread yourself too thin.
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Give yourself a
weekly target. A page a week will give you fifty pages in a year. Two
pages a week will give you a hundred pages a year. A page a day will
give you more than three hundred pages a year.
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Write only on
the page facing you. The left hand page is for further annotations and
self-reflection. Date your work.
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Using any of
the ideas we offer today write a page. Stop at the end of that page.
How long did that take you?
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Decide whether
you want to work in hours or pages. Then limit yourself to that eg ‘One hour session’, or eg
‘two pages’ every
day/every other day/ every week. You decide what the frequency will be but then you must stick to it.
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Write with this
regularity over a month. Don’t fuss too much about what you have
written. Don’t be hyper-self critical. |
It does not matter how much or how little you write. In this way
you get used to your pace, you set up regular expectations for yourself. You will find your pace and something of your style as you persist.
It is like five finger exercises for the pianist, press-ups for
the madly fit.
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After the
month, take a quieter, lazy time and read through the lot. Use the left
hand page to add in further text , to make comments on any of the ideas or
points which keep recurring, or to suggest to yourself further writing.
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With all this
in mind, go back to your writing routine. If your writing reflection
suggests a bigger project eg a short story, or a novel., set up one of
your other notebooks to focus on this project. Here again you use
the same methodology but keep focussed on the single idea. Keep
this first notebook by you to continue with speculative, free writing.
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In the end, the
notebooks will allow you to reflect intelligently on your writing, they
will make the huge interior task or writing more accessible. In time they
will be a record of your progress – showing you that just by practising
your craft with some intelligence and insight – you can be the engine of
your own improvement |
© Wendy Robertson 2003 |
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