The Art and Soul of Note-booking
鈥淭he beautiful messy notebook is at the heart of all my work. Most of it is never seen by anyone but myself,鈥� says MA Writing for Young People Professor, .
Pen and ink are part of the Imagineer鈥檚 toolkit. Mark-making on paper is elemental: there鈥檚 a visceral connection between your mind and the pen in your hand, as you engineer a story using your imagination. Adding colour elicits a child鈥檚 point-of-view, is playful, and there鈥檚 great freedom in the serendipity of mistakes. I was excited to find that note-booking is strongly encouraged on the Bath Spa MA Writing for Young People course.
How do we begin? Just doodle!
Artist 鈥檚 famous description of drawing as 鈥渟imply a line going for a walk鈥� provides a wonderful way to approach a blank page. I鈥檒l often just doodle before writing words, or in the spaces between words, in the margins. The inky line becomes, almost of its own accord, a character, a geometric shape, a creature, a word, a sentence and then, usually, a whole page of writing.
Author and MA lecturer says:
鈥淎ny picture, image, wiggly line is fine, the pencil/pen just needs to keep moving across the page, without pausing to look around, or to worry that the doodle is no good.鈥�
After this simple beginning, she recommends moving on to free writing.
It鈥檚 important to feel you can write anything you like in your notebook. You don鈥檛 have to share it with anyone else unless you want to. Don鈥檛 forget Morning Pages, a kind of journaling described by Julia Cameron in her book The Artist鈥檚 Way. As the name suggests, these pages are to be written as soon as you wake up, writing whatever comes into your head. It鈥檚 a great stimulus to creativity, sluicing the mind of accumulated detritus, and leaving the driftwood of curious ideas behind, ready to be discovered.
Hoard your treasures!
My own notebooks are scrappy, half-formed things, but I love and keep them all 鈥� they鈥檙e full of ideas to be explored and recycled. Some aren鈥檛 even books 鈥� they鈥檙e merely bits of paper, scribbled-on train tickets, or paper napkins, whereas others are too beautiful to mess up, and linger, barely touched on the shelf: shiny-papered Miss Havishams, waiting forever for their day of glory.
Author and MA WFYP graduate Rowena House says:
鈥淭here's a glorious moment when I think a story idea is ready to graduate from scruffy paper outlining to a proper, hard bound, beautiful notebook, and I think: Yes! Here we go. But given the number of half-filled notebooks I now own, I suspect that moment is actually an illusion鈥︹��
My real favourites are my 50p exercise books. Writing in these is like drinking tea in your pyjamas on a rainy day: if you spill the tea, it really doesn鈥檛 matter. These books are for new ideas, rhymes, random scenes and rough plotting. I can bend the covers, tear pages out, scribble on them 鈥� anything.
Black-covered sketchbooks from the art store are ideal for writing and sketching outside, around the city or on the beach. You might choose one particular book for your work-in-progress: I wrote everything, from snatches of overheard conversations to unicorn sketches, ideas, scenes and tutor notes in an orange vinyl-covered budget book I chanced upon in Bath. It was a perfect fit.
Colouring, cutting, and sticking
I鈥檓 intrigued by virtual scrapbooks, with their endless possibilities for notes, images and quotes saved to the cloud or on a PC or phone, but I can鈥檛 imagine living without real ink on actual paper.
And making a paper scrapbook of found images, poetry, quotes and notes is another sort of tactile note-booking. Really good for people who like cutting and sticking, which is probably most of us! Here鈥檚 a beautiful page from MA WFYP graduate Anna Crowe, for her manuscript The Lake.
Just do it!
Write your dream fragments early in the morning, write those brilliant plot solutions that wake you in the middle of the night; hold conversations with a character; draw a map, a sketch, a doodle, stick in a photograph, or make up a recipe for magic chocolate cake鈥� the practice will deepen, strengthen and stretch your narrative ability, just as physical exercise trains your body.
鈥淣otice things. Listen lots,鈥� says . 鈥淲rite things down that you think and feel and see and hear and touch.鈥�
It鈥檚 your book, it鈥檚 a playground for your imagination, where you can write and draw and dance like nobody is watching. So don鈥檛 wait, just do it 鈥� take your line for a walk!
