#181: The New Notebook
Blank pages with a purpose
There is something exhilarating about a new notebook. Maybe that’s just me, the stationery addict, but I know I’m not alone when I search ‘stationery haul’ on YouTube and come up with 407,000 hits.
It’s the thought of all that paper, unmarked, waiting for the first spot of pen ink to stain the page, the blur of a hand as it swiftly attempts to capture every thought and image that appears in the mind, but never quite succeeding. I have spent many an hour browsing the shelves of notebooks in stationery stores, bathing in the abundance of possibilities these blank pages suggest.
Yet I have spent an equal amount of time sat in front of that new blank notebook, pen poised above the page, with not a thought coming out of my head.
This time, however, this will not happen. This is a new notebook with a purpose: to plan, research, and write my MA dissertation.
“Why not write your dissertation notes on your laptop?”
You ask. I tell you: it’s not the same. Typing on my laptop, however satisfying it may sound, is not a successful way for me to note down my brainstorming ideas or important secondary criticism. I cannot conceptualise the notes on a screen as well as I can the notes on a piece of paper. I must copy out the quotes by hand in order to digest the arguments these critics are making, to think about them, criticise them, expand them, making annotations in blue ink around a page of black.
My memory works through pictures and spatial orientation. I can remember and find a useful quote by knowing it is in the bottom left-hand corner of a page, so-far into my notebook. When I transfer those notes onto a screen, they are lost. When I cannot see or feel the page, the digital text becomes a blur, and so I return to my notebooks.
But this notebook means more to me than the importance of writing on paper. This is a new notebook, bought for a purpose, and it is beautiful. Not just in its design, but in its promise. I have spent the last two months writing a total of 13,500 words across five essays. I now face the prospect of writing a further continuous 12,000 words, the last of my masters degree. I welcome this simple blue notebook as an energy boost to my brain, an inspiration to my expanding thoughts.
So I eagerly wait for next week, when the last essay is done and dusted, and I can poise my pen above the paper once more, delving into the excitement of a new project as I begin to mark these blank pages.
