Taking Note

Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever.
— Will Self

I keep threatening to keep a formal journal, but whenever I start one it instantly becomes an exercise in self-consciousness. Instead of a journal I manage to have dozens of notebooks with bits and pieces of stories, poems, and notes. Almost every thing I do has its beginning in a notebook of some sort, usually written on a bus or train.
— Walter Dean Myers

Keep a notebook. Travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that flutters up into your brain. Cheap paper is less perishable than gray matter. And lead pencil markings endure longer than memory.
— Jack London

While one of the previous weeks was all about getting my filing system organized, this past week was all about notebooks.

So . . . at the beginning of my organization blitz one of the things I did was gather up the various notebooks I had laying around my office and throw them in a bin. Some of these notebooks were untouched, but a lot of them were in various stages of being used.

I started my writing career using notebooks, writing in long hand, and I’ll still use a notebook to work out an idea or a poem, or to play around with writing prompts. Once the idea (or whatever) is used, I just put a line through the page (or pages) so I don’t accidentally re-use it.

Unfortunately, I don’t always use the same notebook, hence the stack of partially used ones. So if there were only a couple of pages used, I ripped them out (filing them in the appropriate folder) and then saved the rest of the notebook. But some of the notebooks had too many pages to do this with, so these ones I put in one of the drawers in the wire cart to be used up.

The little notebooks/notepads at the front are blank. They’re intended for quick notes of stuff I want to keep track of/remember but they’re not important enough to go into one of the larger notebooks – names, phone numbers, book titles to look for, etc.

But I still had a bunch of empty notebooks/notepads of various sizes that I didn't know what to do with. I had a box of unused notebooks in my closet so I figured I'd start by seeing if I could just add them to it.

So I take the box out of the closet and see behind it a large plastic bin with the word "Notebooks" taped to it. No ... tell me it ain’t so!

From left to right we have: Cambridge top wire bound 8 X 11 lined pads, Hilroy 8 X 11 single subject notebooks, lined notepads (to be used in a clip board), extra thick steno pads (top), hard bound 6 x 9 notebooks, and the bottom has a couple more hard bound notebooks and some 5 x 8 lined notepads. Beside that bin is the original box of notebooks I had in the closet.

There was no room in either box or bin for the extra, partially used notebooks I’d collected, so I generously stashed them in the black cabinet we use for more supplies in the hubby’s office across the hall. They go nicely with all the plastic report covers, stack of wire bound single subject notebooks, and 8 x 11 notepads I’d already stashed in there.

Mental note: I am not allowed to buy another notepad or notebook ever again. Well, you know, unless I really, really can’t resist. But it’s comforting to know that if we ever get hit by that solar storm that’s supposed to wipe out all electronics, I’ll be set for life with writing supplies, because I also have a drawer full of pens. :-D

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Wordage Report

Last week’s excuse for not getting any writing done was spending so much time duplicating Pillow Cat for the grandbaby (see that story HERE), this week it was working on an afghan for my mother-in-law’s birthday. But I still managed to do my three-minute words every day, so I guess that’s something.

NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts – 829+781+928=2,538
Three minute words – 111+119+111+127+129+110+115=822
Total words: 2,538 words

EDITING:
*sigh*

Once again the only editing I did was the story for Friday’s post.

WHAT I’M READING:
Despite the fact I tried to read slowly, I finished Stop the World, Snapshots From A Pandemic, edited by Lise McClendon. This was a combination of personal essays, anecdotes, and fiction, all centered on the pandemic. It’s a powerful book and I think in the years to come it, and books like it, are going to be an important reminder of what life was like during the pandemic.

On the Kindle I’m reading Ember’s Curse, by Gena D. Lutz. This is a yummy book with both werewolves and vampires, and the only reason I haven’t finished it already is because it’s the book I’m reading while riding the exercise bike and I’m exerting a great deal of self-control by limiting my reading to bike time only.

It’s a double edged sword, reading the Kindle while biking. The more I’m enjoying the book, the more likely I am not to skip my workout. But if I enjoy the book too much, I’ll keep reading the book (after my workout) until it’s done and then I’m stuck having to find another interesting book.

LAST WEEK’S GOALS
I nailed the first two goals from last week: I aced the three-minute words and I worked diligently on my mother-in-law’s afghan. But alas, once again that’s as good as it gets.

THIS WEEK’S GOALS
1. Continue with the three minute word, and continue the cave story.
2. Finish my mother-in-law’s afghan.
3. Start the edits/rewrites on Elemental Spirit.
4. Look into online courses.
5. Work on expanding my Christmas story.

Happy writing.