Fiction Scribe

I don’t like fancy journals. Hardbound is great for books, but when it comes to things I write in, spiral bound please. No fancy covers – though hard covers can be nice when you write on the road a lot. No fifty-dollar, hard cover, hard bound, engraved with my name on the cover notebooks or journals.

I won’t write in them.

There are no exceptions – at least, there hasn’t been so far in my life. I have given good attempts at writing in the fancy books I receive, but I never keep going.

Just give me a crap notebook and I’ll be happy.

No, you don’t need to run over a perfectly nice notebook just for me, but give me a lined, spiral bound notebook that you or your child would use for school and I’ll be happy. A notebook that will take more damage than an idiot driver in a little red sports car is just fine.

Why the crappy notebooks? Why can’t I write beautiful things in a beautiful notebook?

Well, I can. Or rather, I can try. But the thing is, I don’t write beautiful things from the first go. That’s why there are things called drafts. In my first draft? Well, that’s where I need to give myself permission to write the real crap. Let the hero save the princess just so I can get it out of my system and then go ahead and kill him when he finds out she’s been having an affair with his father in the next draft.

Crappy, cheap, plain notebooks give writers space and permission to get things – no matter how stupid, silly, whatever they are – out of their system. They can explore angles without having to worry about cleaning ripping out pages so they don’t show or scribble marks.

Save your fancy journals. Give me a crappy notebook any day.