The Notebook Affair

Let me confess at the very outset – I have fallen hopelessly, helplessly in love with writing.

My ten year affair was love at first sight – and forever- and my addiction is such that last year in August I gave up my handsomely paid job with Her Majesty’s Prison Service to become, yes -a full-time writer! Madness I know but I was smitten and what do I care? I am a writing junkie who needs her fix, lusting after everything remotely connected with the writing world, and intoxicated with my new found freedom to enjoy it all.

Joyce Carol Oates in a Paris Review interview (and if you don’t know this magazine or the four book set featuring interviews with writers then take a look – they provide sharp insights into the way great writers work and are a real record of the writing life) – says ‘somehow the activity of writing changes everything.’  Well that’s how it is for me.

Writing has and is changing my life!

Take the notebook for example – I was never much bothered about notebooks before. Now I am quite obsessed. The thought of a ring binder file filled with loose- leaved,  hole- punched file paper, has me running for cover. Only a notebook will do – Pukka Pad Vellum with its delicious cream paper across which the pen purrs, Cahier 96 pg Rouge Papier, as only the French make, with its delicate squares, soft black Moleskine, Rosehip- fruit and floral motif covers and clean white paper – no lines. My lovely John Singer Sergeant from the National Gallery of Scotland, bought for me by my daughter and far too beautiful to write in – I could go on – but suffice to say, even if you write for the most part direct onto the computer (which I rarely do in the first instance) you should always, always, carry a notebook with you for your writing sketches

As you can see I like to customise some of my notebooks  by collaging the covers with pictures or words – better torn than anything more precise. This was something I learned from my wonderful friend and mentor author Wendy Robertson. It’s creative and fun – rather like blogging – and if like me you are a notebook floosie, and have far too many on the go at any one time, it helps with distinguishing one from another (a roughly made contents page on the inside cover helps but is nowhere near so pretty) 

At a recent writing workshop, for International Women’s Day Handbags and Gladrags, led by Wendy and myself, I was inspired to write my poem Dangerous Places, which includes  references to two of the notebooks I was carrying with me that day. It all came from us emptying the contents of our handbags onto the table in front of us – the table was piled high with all the important things we carry around with us every day but also with the debris of our lives and in some cases the downright bizzare! (ask yourself what you have in your handbag right now – see what I mean?). We made a list of everything before us and took it from there. There was a lot of discussion, fun and laughter but some pretty serious stuff too  – here is my poem

Dangerous Places –

Here – the rose covered notebook of my escape
from a hidden place
secreted in the handbag of a new life –
scented with broken sandalwood sticks

Here – the grey beaded necklace from Pazenas
that begs my return,
pencilled in the slim diary of past
indescretions and private investigations

Here the purple satin make-up bag, bought new,
a second notebook, blue –
without the cornflower paperweight of
my daughter’s wild imaginings.

Here – Rose Tremain’s The Swimming Pool Season,
silent marker held-
coaxing new beginnings half- formed,
waiting for the rush of early pages
and the whisper of the first fecund spring.

Here – the keys, pens, glasses and memory stick
all, of my incarceration
reformed, reborn in the well of my aspiration.

Sing softly now of dangerous places
no longer silent.

Perhaps you recognise the rose covered notebook from my first photo? and my escape from prison too!

Writing Tip -Notebooks/Lists– if you’re not used to using  a notebook, or if you’re just starting out, then use your notebook to make LISTS – lists are a very important tool for the writer – observe the world around you -maybe over a coffee in a favourite cafe, or a glass of wine (but be warned after more then one glass the writing tends to go astray!)

Use single words at first, develop them into phrases and don’t foget that it’s the ‘glint on broken glass,’ we are after and not the shining moon- this is really the show don’t tell mantra – the Chekhov quote at the start of the blog. Just to know the sun is shining is often not enough, we need to look for fresh ways to describe or imply – without telling – we don’t tell our readers we show them

Once you have  your list then you have a starting point: the bones of  a poem, snatches of dialogue, a useful aid to memory if you want to recapture the day or place, and just a beautiful thing in itself…