I did a favor for bookshop recently and they paid me off with a Moleskine notebook. At any given time I normally have half a dozen notebooks to hand, but they’re usually pretty budget. If I’m heading out the door to a job I tend to grab whatever piece of crap is lying around that I can write on. Often at the start of a new book project I’ll assign a leftover school exercise book as the project notebook for that title, but there’s nothing special or magical about it. Just something to scratch a few notes in.
I quite like this Moleskine thing, however. It has a wonderful, old world analog feel to it. Like something Hunter Thompson may have used. Or Kerouac before him. Or Hemingway in Spain. Or, more appropriately, some grubbing roundsman on a Chicago tabloid in the 1920s.
I don’t want to fetishize it, because I’ve come to understand there is a whole world of Moleskine fetish culture out there, particularly on teh interwebz, where thousands of people seem to be in headlong flight from digital convenience back to analog clunkiness. But I’ve been making an effort to carry the thing around with me and use it in the way that writers are supposed to use notebooks. To jot down thoughts, observations, plans, to take notes and so on. It’s been an interesting exercise for somebody who hasn’t really picked up a pen in 20 years.
I divided the notebook up into a couple of parts. A sort of inbox which takes up most of the 1st half, where I jot down those immediate notes that might get scribbled onto a post-it if I was at my desk. I’ve also been using it to jot down a few things while I’ve been doing this year’s restaurant reviews, and occasionally to block out ideas for a blog or a column or a feature when they come to me.
About half way through there’s a little tab, behind which I’ve set aside a bunch of pages for ‘books’. I tend to take my time writing in this section, as it is where I compose and work through ideas for the next series as they occur to me.
At the backend of the notebook I have a few pages given over to what I think of as ‘the long arc’. This is stuff I may not get to for months if not years. But stuff that is worth storing somewhere permanently. For instance a friend contacted me by e-mail the other day with an idea for a graphic novel that I thought was kind of brilliant. I’m so deeply mired in negotiations and preparations for the next longform series, and of course the e-books I’m trying to write over the Christmas holidays, that I have no time to spare to think about it. But it’s a cool idea and one that could be totally worth investigating somewhere down the road.
All of these things are possible to keep track of with digital devices, of course. And I’m still working my masters shiny precious gadgets like a fiend. It’s perhaps because of that, that I’m also enjoying unplugging, slowing down and writing a few things out the old-fashioned way each day, including a brief diary entry before I go to bed. How odd it is to write something like that with no expectation that anybody anywhere will read it.
Unless I gather up all of my papers, as I do every couple of years, and ‘donate’ them to the University for state library for a tax write off.
John, I really think you need a Fedora and an overcoat to go with the notebook. And some swirling mist in the background.
Yes. Yes I do.
See, I had a similar idea to your notebooks using one of those A5 Art pads, and I’d just doodle or write whatever in there. I got halfway there, by putting a pen in my bag, but that A5 book has just sat there on the floor next to my bed.
I think I use twitter as my ‘notepad’, these days. Not sure if that’s a good thing.
Annabel Crabb (Down, Abe!) does the same thing. Uses her parliamentary twitter acc to ‘take notes’ for her column.
I too am known for an addiction to the technology, particularly of the fruit kind. but i find that there is something in my brain that prefers hard copy for planning and the like. I still have those massive calendar blotters and a heap of coloured pens on my desk at work for helping my working week.
I think you’ll like this film clip JB http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgfa8YpE5x8
Is it really a flight back to “Analog clunkiness” or just a genuine appreciation for handwriting as a vanishing art?
I love a notebook and always have one on me. I could go one of those moleskine thingies. And a new pen. I haven’t gone a day without picking up a pen since I first learned to write. I would miss it.
I always avoided Moleskines cos of the expense. I thought they were taking the piss. And I guess I didn’t buy this one, but the idea that it would have cost me over twenty bucks encourages me to use the thing
Thanks for your generous advice, John. Very helpful. I bought myself a Parker roller ball pen and a special notebook for Christmas. I intend to write in 2012. JG :)
Mrs Blarkon went way beyond moleskin and got me Italian leather Duomo notebooks one year for my birthday. http://www.duomo.com.au/
They are stunning – cost more than some Android tablets – but are so nice that I’m not sure that I have anything worthwhile to write in them ;-)
That’s actually a recognised pathology, well, recognised on the internet – the inability to mark the first mark in a virgin notebook.
They sit by my desk. I occasionally take them out and smell them. I even went and got a special architect’s clutch pencil to write in them because ink seemed so crass (also as a lefty smudge city).
Need magic hand made paper that autosyncs with Evernote.
Maybe I could desecrate a few Moleskines before working up to the Duomos.
Knock yourself out, kid.
I need to scribble things down in order to remember them, and after trying a bunch of different options ended up with one of the thinner moleskine ‘journal’ notebooks – basically the size of a passport, it slips into a pants pocket and doesn’t weigh them down. Also, as it’s grid-ruled it’s handy for scratching out sketches and woodworking plans.
For snippets I hear & hate to forget I write myself text messages and keep them in unsent drafts.
EG: Anecdotage, Teratogenic, Opsimath & Appaphenia. & quote for the year; “Outside of a dog a book is man’s best friend, inside a dog it’s too dark to read.” Groucho Marx
For years I used those little red and black covered note books, specifically because they would fit in a shirt pocket. About a year ago I realised I had lost the one I as I was wandering round an airport. Wandered into the airport bookshop/stationary store, and all they had were these wanky overpriced little pocket notebooks.
I bought it anyway. I got one with squared pages. And I really dig the little pocket thingy inside the back cover. Gonna need a new one soon, but. This one is filling up with stuff.
I’ve found that beer coasters these days are impossible for note taking. Both sides are filled with graphics and printing. Its a fucking disgrace. Its probably meant the end of many a Miles Franklin award winning tome.
I’ve normally got at least two of those 5 subject note books on the go at the one time, the fancy one with the different colour pages in each section. It’s got to the stage that a few of the engineering firms that I subcontract to reckon the easiest way to put me out of the business would be to pinch my notebooks.
Nowdays I also carry around am iPad as that can store all my spreadsheets and diagrams, which saves me from having to carry around that load of paper, but for actually taking notes as I walk around a site or attend a meeting, nothing beats a pen and paper. It even opens faster than one of those new fangled apple notebooks.
In our graphic design course, our teachers made special mention of allowing blank space on business cards for taking notes/mud maps etc for other people, because them people were more likely to keep them! If I ever find myself designing beer coasters, I’ll be sure to include a notes section on the reverse :)
S’funny. I had it with me an hour or so back when I went down the post office to send off some shit. Stopped into Riverbend, the local bookshop, for a coffee afterwards.
Oh.
All right.
For a coffee and a piece of fudge. Didn’t have my phone with me cos it was recharging at home. So I had to amuse myself making a few notes while I waited. It was very restful, altho I did feel like a bit of a wanker, or even worse, an unpublished poet*, writing in my moleskine at the bookshop.
*I am aware of the tautology.
There is space in our collections for “John Birmingham’s Book Of Splodey Poetry”
I mean seriously. Who the fuck has done a technothriller in verse? It would be art and snark and splosions in the same thing. You could wear a beret.
You only look like a wanker if you chew the end of your pencil with a far off expression.
Or if you dress like Greybeard.
I have A5 spiral notebook with the words “1970′s computer” printed on the front. It is better than a laptop computer, most notably because it never melts when lightning strikes the Oubliette. This happens more often than you would expect, thanks to the bizarre scientific experiments conducted by my Lord and Master Greybeard (Keeper of the Torch, Bringer of Gruel, Mutator of Rats).
I carry a list of books, dvd’s, games & cd’s i want to buy so when I walk into a bookshop or whatever I don’t have to guess if I have it already and I try not to buy anything not on the list. Saves me time & money.
But plenty of white space for taking notes.
” Kerouac before him”, wouldn’t that only be if you wrote it on a roll of tellyprinter paper?
“I don’t want to fetishise this”….too late.
Wow you have access technologies undreamed by these writers except in their wildest imaginations, the very riches of history from across time and space and the ability to record these details in a thousand ways to make connections so complex you need 7th dimensional maths to calculate them and you are waxing rhapsodic about stuff kids make in year 2 art projects.
Kicking and screaming you will dragged in to the 22nd century.
Back in the Uniguard Era before teaching, I wrote first drafts on a notepad (not moleskin) at work. This after laptops were banned by management, perhaps for good reason. It is worth pointing out that once they did that, my productivity went up. I’d write the scenes during the week and transcribe them during the nights and weekends for editing and revision.
Today, ironically enough, if I have time, I find that I have to type whatever fiction I have out. That said, I think there is a lot to be said for slowing down and writing your ideas out longhand. I miss the feel of the pen skipping across the paper, the sound of the tip scratching against the surface when it is quiet. To me, that is the spark of creation.
Quiet and solitude, that lost country I once lived in. How I long to return to it someday.
Respects,
Murph
On the Outer Marches
Mr Murphy, Sir, if you want peace and quiet you are welcome to join me in the Oubliette. No sound but the scritching of little rat claws across the stones, the slow drip of moisture from the moss covered walls, and the faint echo of evil laughter from the Laboratory far above. It’s very peaceful.
Interesting JB, you are almost there, you see, Mole Skin is the pure,unafflicted with ARSELICKNESS and FKN SNOBBERY of the Catlle , cow cocky farmer, B * S’er, RED NECK, Roo killing, fkn BUMDY RUM PIG Bush ute.
I’m trying to picture you in Mole Skin pants, opening up a pocket to right on, then again, if you were a god like me, the FKN PANTS WOULD BE WRITTEN ALL OVER, with CHICKS TELEPHONE NUMBERS. B & S FKN LEGEND!,
HEY, you put the CAT mudflap on the Volvo ute and ya 6 footer aerials or fkn what. Thats something you could donate to the book worms.
Fkn mole skin books, fk me, I’m fkn shatterd to be honest!
ooops, FKN POCKETS to WRITE on and thats B & S’er, fkn asterisk fkn shite, and well, I’m just having visions of people rubbing the MOLE SKIN…it AINT FKN GOOD
I have been in the habit of carry around a Quill product called “Fat Little Notebook” in recent times. A spiral side-bound item, it fits a coat or cargo pocket reasonably well.
I’ve avoided smaller (pants pocket sized) notebooks, since the incident where one went through the laundry, taking some useful information with it. I don’t remember what it was, I wrote it down so I wouldn’t have to.
I do really like Moleskines. Getting unduly hung up on them, or on any brand of something, is a bit of a danger – I never want to be That Guy who just *cannot* write without this brand of notebook and that brand of fountain pen and I dunno, whatever else. I still do plenty of longhand work in eighty-nine-cent exercise books from OfficeWorks. But using the good stuff, whether a Moleskine or one of the other brands that seem to have sprung up to get in on the fashion (there’s one with an Italian name that I forget, the thick-spined Zap Books that Borders used to sell, and an Australian one called Nora Whynot that I’ve been using for notes for the latest works) is a little like dressing a bit better for an occasion, or bowing in at the start of a martial arts class – it helps give my headspace a tiny nudge out of the regular everyday shit and into “okay, serious now”.
The little passport-size ones are excellent but I find I use the A5s much more often, usually the ones with the brown card covers. I can use those for just notes still, but if I want to write actual prose I don’t have to keep breaking into a sentence to flip pages.
Actually I’ve found that a really good exercise to try and train myself out of ponderous storytelling habits has been to make myself write a complete story, beginning-middle-ending, that fits into a double-page spread of an A5 Moleskine. I feel I’ve got some real benefits out of that.
Havock, when I used to manage outdoor works crews, I used to write down phone numbers etc on the thigh portion of my overalls. I found it helped if I a) only used biro b) washed them that night.
Yeah, I’ve been happy enough with this new notebook to consider dropping a coupla books on a decent exercise pad as the ‘bible’ for my next book series. Character sketches. Back story. Working out narrative arcs etc. (Mostly cos I suspect I could get a nice tax write off for the library donation later). But I do wonder how I’d structure the thing. With a shitty two buck exercise pad I dont feel the need to be that organized or even neat.
Hmm, maybe I should get one.
Something that’s worked for me in the past: get a stack of A4 lecture pads from a newsagent or stationery place – I go with the 48- or 64-page ones. Then get one of those thick leathery zip-up compendium things, with the pockets and pen-holders inside one cover and the ring-binder rings in the middle. Then you can have a pad for each thing you’re working on, organise them inside it how you wish, swap them out as your on-the-move workload changes, and keep a spare at the back for miscellaneous notes/wild surmises.
I don’t do this as often now because the smaller books go better with my laptop pack but I still use the compendium thing on occasion.
The other thing is that you can draw the splosions.
Having now actually considered what JB was saying, or I guess at least alluding too, it would be rather remiss of me not to ensure that all who visit this here blog are made aware, or at least we make a concerted effort, sustained even, to drive the message home.
I’m not one for long winded deliveries, especially when , say for example, A punch in the face stops the person talking as good as asking them to shut up, but, this, well…. It is rather simple and from a MALE perspective, the soft, supply texture, aromas wafting whilst the mid wanders to god like thoughts, simply from its touch…the purveyed sense of FKN HELL ITS WICKED, it’s the FKN BEST, ya ya. Is not quite as good as the realization that the emotions generated from writing in a mole skinned book, are the same as writing on the side of a Mercedes, Lambo, Aston Martin or the likes….you know its good and its FKN BAD!
This is about the only reason I could think of that I’d want an iPad- http://bamboostylus.wacom.asia/video/. Wacom are generally very good at their shit, and I could definitately handle an alternate to sticky fingers on a smudgy screen. I’m hoping one day there will be a smaller, more mobile digital notepad using something similar to Wacom’s pressure sensitive drawing stylus, with notes divided into digital ‘pages’ that could be used as-is or converted to text for use in a Word processor, and equally suited to drawing and making sketches and mudmaps as well as taking notes (kind of like the Microsoft Courier seemed like it would be, before it was canned). That would have me way more excited than the iPad.
Any sort of non-erase-y notebooks work great at games; however, if you are going back to Moleskines, keep in mind the fedoras nowadays have the band sewn in, no room for the ‘PRESS’ card jammed in. (I know, I tried to find one for my 1st stint as a sideline reporter back in Oct.) Had to settle for a re-pop version of a late ’60s thin-bill Fedora.
Trowzers, I liked the look at the Bamboo as soon as I laid eyes on it. But do you think I could ever find one? Nup. So the other day I ponied up $25 for a Cosmonaut.
http://www.studioneat.com/
I think this is where I point out that you can get a whole array of different-styled stylii from Deal Extreme from the grand cost of $2.50. Picked myself up a bunch (including one very similar to your studio neat) for a tenner.
Free postage, too.
But I spent twenty five bucks on mine. Plus postage. So it must be better. it must!
Trowzers – Windows 8 on ARM tablets (iPad thin, but with built in handwriting recognition – which has been awesome since Vista). My current tablet (ep 121) http://www.asus.com.au/Eee/Eee_Pad/Eee_Slate_EP121/ is good – but only has around 4.5 hours active battery – the ARM tablets should get iPad like battery lifetime without Android’s general arseiness.
I now keep all my my notes in the cloud – instantly synced to my horde of devices. No danger of ever losing my precious thoughts, ideas and flashes of inspiration.
On the move – my Android phone or tablet. Working, my laptop or workstations. I don’t know how I managed before Dropbox. Have an idea, hammer out a few words in a text editor and save it in my Dropbox folder on whichever device I’m working on. A few seconds later and it’s copied across all of my switched on devices and available to me on whatever machine I’m working on. An absolute Godsend.
Cheers
Evernote might be more useful for that sort of thing – cross platform sinking without having to open any files – you just do it from the app. If there’s a platform that Evernote hasn’t been released on, I’ve yet to find it.
http://www.evernote.com
All well and good, gentlemen, but storing your musings on electronic devices means that when you write something awful it will be preserved forever in the net. Do we not all have some cringeworthy scribblings crammed into the bottom of our bedside drawers? When one has matured as a writer one can burn those literary embarrassments. One cannot set fire to the internet. You may think that it is easy to rid oneself of online atrocities stored on the internet by merely pressing the delete button but thanks to the Cloud you would be mistaken. Those atrocities will always be retrievable. Truly there times when I am tempted to return to slate and chalk notetaking.
For all of the tech wizardry available these days I must say I LOVE my moleskin diary. Been using them for the last 5 years, still have everyone in my desk drawer. Strangely I’m waiting for the day when I get called in front a court room and asked about a particular date, at which point I will blow the dust off the old diary, unhook the black elastic band, shuffle aside old receipts and the like and declare…..well “it appears that I had lunch with the lads at ‘Marque’, shortly followed by beers, then a night out.” You can’t do that with the gadgets, most likely you will have had several devices since then, lost data due to unfortunate system restores and then found the Cloud wanting due to not paying your monthly subscription fee for all of that valuable disk!
‘s funny. When I pull out My notebook, it usually means that someone is about to have a very bad day. But my notebook is blue, has the Qld Gov crest on the cover and has pages and pages of badness, stupidity &/or villainy.
Oh & Alex, note taking can be a two edged sword. I once decided to track my consumption of alcohol, so I jotted down each drink in a little notebook. It turns out my estimate of 4-5 standard drinks per week was, er, conservative.
I once used coasters to try and take minutes of a pub session for the purposes of posterity. The first few ended up being quite funny. After that was unintelligible garbage interspersed with pictures of genitals, sharks and explosions.
Luckily the Cloud didn’t exist back then.
I once used coasters to try and shift a refrigerator. A word to the wise: this does not work on stairs.
I showed-up just for the-hell-of it to say, “Go to hell, Birmingham!” No reason… I just felt like saying it to somebody.
Hunter S. stored everything in his mind until he crawled back to a typewriter. I keep a few notebooks and decorate them according to the place I plan to be. Nothing has as much potential than a blank notebook. Who will write the last “great” Gonzo book? Who has seen the lizard people in all their vileness? We’ll see. This will be the last generation for the genre. People forget that Hunter’s books were largely parables of politics mixed with Anthropology.