Read more about his experience using fountain pens in these notebooks at seize the dave: paper review: moleskine cahier.

One Notebook or Many? Part 1: The case for one notebook

One book is cooler. A volume covering all of ones life, being read by descendants long after my death, like the journals of Leonardo da Vinci, makes a nice day dream.

It’s fun to read through a diverse journal with sketches and notes on all kinds of things. Paging through an old journal and coming across doodles my daughter made is a treat. Sketches of things I was planning to build or of other things reminds me of the diversity of my life, which is often handy when I’ve become too focused on one narrow aspect….

One Notebook or Many? Part 2: The case for many notebooks.

A single subject notebook increases focus. When I’m writing in a single subject notebook, I feel a discipline to focus on that subject. It’s a reminder of what I’m doing, and there’s no risk that while I’m paging through old entries I’ll end up on some trip down memory lane. Instead, paging through the book reminds me of other aspects of the subject, helps the focus, and can even help with writer’s block…

One Notebook or Many? Part 3: The case for loose sheets

Blank sheets are versatile and adaptable. Since it’s not part of a book, it doesn’t have a dedicated purpose. The paper can be used for anything – I can write a letter, leave a note, give it to my daughters to draw on, or fold it into an airplane. This is especially useful when traveling, because it means I carry less…

One Notebook or Many? Part 4: What’s been working for me

Separate book vs. in the journal. I’ve found that unless the new book has a very strong purpose (like the NumberQuotes notebook) or has a specific place in my life and routine (weekly planner), it’s at risk of being abandoned. The food journal hasn’t quite become a reliable partner yet, but the birds book has. The weekly planner has become very important, and I record some things there that could be in my journal. Despite many attempts to find an electronic replacement for my weight records, pen and paper have proven to be the best and most reliable.

If the work has a lot of structure, and clear boundaries, a separate book seems to work best. If the work is somewhat amorphous, a separate book just doesn’t feel right. For example, I just used the large Leuchtturm1917 Jottbook I received to start a web-focused notebook, only ideas and thoughts related to my various websites that don’t have books of their own, or for ideas (like selling ad space) that are common to all sites. That lasted a short while before the book become refocused on this blog. So far, it’s been earning its keep.

So many things in these posts resonated for me. I’ve tried various approaches, and like Steve have ended up with a hybrid solution: one main notebook for most things, plus a few satellite notebooks for specific topics or uses that require a different format. But the other solution that I was surprised Steve didn’t mention was to use a Filofax or similar binder– you can incorporate different page formats, devote a few pages in a section to different topics, and carry over pages you want to keep for reference while filing away others. I used small looseleaf notebooks for years and loved them… but then electronic devices replaced the calendar and address book sections of those notebooks… and for what was left, a stack of bound journals did just seem cooler than a box full of rubber-banded looseleaf pages. But I keep feeling like I should give it a try again.

How about you? One or many? Join in the discussion here or at Recording Thoughts.

Here’s the intro to the article about the exhibition, which I found rather chilling.

In Peter Carey’s award-winning novel True History of the Kelly Gang, the novelist metamorphosed into an archivist, claiming to be publishing 13 parcels of soiled and rust-stained papers supposedly written by Ned Kelly in the unmistakeable grammar and syntax we recognise from the bushranger’s famous Jerilderie Letter.

Kelly’s papers might have been damp and ripped, according to Carey’s artful deceit. But at least they could have endured feasibly for more than a century without seeming preposterous.

Compare that to Carey’s own manuscript. The Booker prize-winning author composed his novel on a laptop that is a prized item in the State Library of Victoria’s collection.

You can see the laptop. But what you cannot see, contemplate or critique is Carey’s manuscript – his revisions, different drafts, the substitution of one word for another, perhaps an entire passage angrily crossed out. All that compositional magic lies mouldering inside the machine, too delicate to access in case it is changed or lost.

Fortunately, the exhibition in Canberra is all about paper, with no laptops on display!

[Dr. Rachel Buchanan, a historian] believes no present writers or scientists could be included in an equivalent exhibition in 2112. ”We are on an abyss now. It’s a real turning point in the discussion about what archives are, and what can actually be kept.”

Let’s hope some writers are still printing out drafts!

Read more: Writer’s craft is now a ghost in the machine.

See more at One year moleskine #12 | nicoz goes west.

So here it is another new year, and here I am once again, picking up and cleaning up, getting rid of the old to make way for the new, editing and shredding, filing and piling, giving away and throwing away – all in an effort to tidy up the past to make room for the future.

It’s a daunting task.

I am not a collector, but you live long enough and you end up collecting things. Handprints your kids made when they really were kids. Greeting cards that go back 50 years….

… And notebooks. Dozens and dozens of notebooks.

I started with the notebooks, because boxes full of them are crowding my office: white reporter notebooks, which I have been using for 35 years.

They live in cardboard boxes, 2006 mixed in with 1985 and 1992 and 2001.

The wheat from the chaff. That was my goal. That’s all I had to do. Look inside these notebooks, give them a cursory read and decide what to keep and file, and what to throw way.

But it’s all daunting. Cleaning up and organizing, staying focused and on task – impossible, because here’s the thing. You cannot look through notebooks or greeting cards or books or records or even a drawer full of scarves without losing your direction.

You may be aiming for the future, eyes on a clutter-free tomorrow, heart in the right direction, but then you stumble upon a sentence, or a signature, or remember a song and where you were and who you were when you first heard it. Or you hold a knitted scarf in your hands and see the sweet 11-year-old who knitted it for you, her first real scarf, and all of a sudden you’re not looking at the future anymore, you’re not even in the present. You’ve been hijacked to Memory Lane.

via Is there room for the past in the future? – The Boston Globe.

Below is a corner of my office where I was going through boxes of notebooks and had stashed some used ones that needed to be put away. There are a few months of daily notebooks, notebooks already reviewed, notebooks to be reviewed, and some childhood notebooks. (All of these have now been put back in a closet– I try to keep the notebook clutter under control!)

A close-up of some of the daily notebooks. I write the dates they cover on the bottom.

On top of my file cabinet: some stray samples to be given away someday, and some stuff already reviewed, and a small looseleaf binder I used many years ago that I’ll do a post on at some point.

Here’s the shelves in one of my closets: shoeboxes full of small notebooks, and stacks of larger journals and sketchbooks.

Here on a bookshelf are my Moleskine City Notebooks (though I’ve since bought more). Amsterdam is the only one in this stack that I haven’t used yet. The others are New York, London, Paris, Istanbul and Lisbon.

And finally, this is the stack of notebooks-in-waiting I keep in my desk. These are all notebooks that have made the cut as ones I like enough to use as daily notebooks or sketchbooks at some point (mostly Moleskines, HandBook Journals, Piccadillies, and a couple of others). I’m not worried about running out at the moment… but only because I have an additional stack of spares elsewhere!

There are close to 100 notebooks visible in these photos, not counting the ones in the unopened shoeboxes and additional notebooks I have stored elsewhere. Welcome to my world!

Another thing that makes my notebook unique and interesting is the open access to its pages. While diaries are revered as the fiefdom of one man’s innermost thoughts and deep, dark secrets, my notebook is like a scrapbook that anyone can browse. When I began using my notebook, I vowed to be discreet and to put only wholesome things in it because I didn’t want to be lampooned over a controversial or intriguing entry. Letting other people take a glimpse at the contents of my notebook gives them the opportunity to share their views about the stuff that I have written, drawn or collected. In doing so, creative exchanges follow, varying and engaging perspectives are ignited and we get a chance to acquire more wisdom and inspiration.

(From My notebook | Inquirer Opinion.)

I think most of us who keep notebooks tend to do so privately. It may not always be as secretive as the lock-and-key diary we may have had as kids, but a notebook is usually something personal that’s not volunteered for others to read, either because it’s too mundane, too sensitive, or just not in a finished enough state for the writer to want feedback on it. Sketchbooks might be more public, especially if they’re used for an art class, but sometimes artists even want to keep their drawings private. (It might depend on who’s acting as their nude model!)

So the quote above seemed quite revolutionary to me. I tried to imagine what it would be like to keep a notebook that would be completely open to others– it’s a nice idea as described above, as a way to share ideas and opinions. It would be sort of like keeping a blog or one’s Facebook page between the covers of a journal. But I guess that’s also part of the problem for me– the friends who I’d want to read my notebook are spread too far and wide for me to be able to easily hand it to them, so the internet makes more sense for that kind of communication. My notebooks remain intensely private, aside from a page here and there that I might show to someone (or post on this blog!).

How about you? Do you keep your notebooks to yourself or share them freely with others?

See more photos at AninhadaBest’s photostream on Flickr.

In the first picture, the bottom row is empty notebooks, and the top are notebooks that I have filled or am in the progress of filling.

In the second and third picture, you have a notebook I made myself. Free advertising for Starbucks, I ‘spose, haha. Its the first Coptic stitch binding I’ve tried, so its a bit loose, unfortunately.

The fourth picture is one of two school notebooks for kids I got while I was in Bolivia in May. Each one has a description of a battle on the front and back covers.

I filled up a Moleskine pocket cahier with notes from a class I took on leadership from a retired Major General teaching at the University of Oklahoma. One of the best classes I’ve ever taken!

In picture 6 and 7, there’s the sketchbook I’m filling up with my favorite quotes. Its open to a page filled with quotes from a really good book I just finished called “The Voyage of the Elephant”.

Pictures 9-15 are from the Peanuts Moleskine I started around May 17th. I named it “Viajero” or Traveler for obvious reasons… I’ve had a busy summer! There are pages from Bolivia, from a weekend long cycling festival in Tulsa, and from 2 different cycling trips I took: one to Mount Scott, in Oklahoma, and 2 from a 500 mile, 6 day ride down the eastern coast of Florida that I just finished a couple weeks ago. The last page is from an Invisible Children conference called 4th Estate. Invisible Children is a non-profit dedicated to stopping a militia called the Lords Resistance Army in central Africa, whose modus operandi is abducting children as young as 5 or 6 in each village they attack and forcing them to fight as child soldiers. I bring that up because at the conference they gave us the notebooks in picture 16…

I geeked out tremendously when I saw that they gave us 4th Estate stamped notebooks. The cover is a really soft, almost suede-like material. Even cooler is whats inside the notebook- a few of the pages are already filled, for instance in the second to last picture the drawings are a sort of brainstorming of the 4th Estate logo, which is really cool because it shows the thought and detail that went into its design. As in the last picture, some of the pages have poems, quotes, and excerpts that were inspiring to the Invisible Children staff. We definitely needed notebooks, too- they had a ton of amazing speakers and sessions lined up during the conference. If you want to learn more about IC, there’s their site invisiblechildren.com. I’ve also set up a site that has some information and updates about the conflict and my fundraising efforts for Invisible Children, DillonCarroll.com.