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Notebooks

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14:47 / 22.10.03

I find Moleskines overpriced also, but don't particularly care what I'm seen writing in. That said, David Foster Wallace may have written in a Barney notebook, but somehow I don't think I'd particularly want to.

16:02 / 22.10.03

That's why I like these cheap Moleskines, they don't come with the potted history.

16:08 / 22.10.03

I really fancy just about anything to do with stationery. from obviously purely aesthetic things to completely functional, from decorative or craft oriented to basic and sensible, if you might find it on a desk, I will love it.

...I even started an lj community

16:40 / 22.10.03

I'd never even heard of Moleskine before this thread. Their homepage... it has a "Gallery."

Goodness.

And the links page is quite something too.

I should mention that I do have one special notebook - my travel journal. I take it on longer trips. It's of a kind that I've had trouble finding lately -- pages something like 9"x6", about an inch and a half thick, with a wide spiral. I think it just says "spiral bound journal" on the cover. Probably made by Mead, but I can't be sure. It's roughly the same dimensions as a large address book, but without all the dividers.

Perfect Tommy: I rarely reread anything I've written as notes. What I've learned is that the act of writing is what impresses it on the memory. In general, like for song lyrics, I'll scribble a couple verses down, then reread that only once - while I type it into a more legible form on the computer. Then I'll start editing on there.

16:42 / 22.10.03

Oh, and I don't think there's anything pretentious about sketching in public. I'd like to live in a world where that happened more often.

Pretentious would be asking strangers to hold that pose until you'd finished.

16:54 / 22.10.03

Oh dear! I've done that. Although she was a museum worker and I was at a museum so I think that should have been in her job description.

I have thes big hardcovered black drawing books that intimidate the hell out of me. Its as if the blackness emphasizes just how blank the pages are. I usually rip out the first page to teach it who's boss.

20:01 / 22.10.03

i keep many many notebooks, and even get given them. people think i have more ideas than i really do, as i seem to get given them an awful lot and dont use them any thing like enough to justify such extravagance.

i do always have one in my bag, one by my bed, and one lying around the front room. i dont really fear anyone reading them, but at the same time you had better have a better explanation for opening it than 'it fell open' if you are going to ask me about the contents.

i have a BA barracus sticker on notebook#1 that says sucker proof, from 'butter beats' record store in bris vegas; maybe that is enough of a protective seal.

that's not the only sticker on the cover, but it is the one that will kill you. and pity the fool who raised you.

22:40 / 22.10.03

Man, I didn't realize that using a moleskine made me a pretentious pseudo-intellectual...

It takes me a good 6 months to fill one, because I always carry my 'real' notebook with me if I really want to get in there and write. (The moleskine is simply there for emergency "omigod don't forget X!!!" and things to research or visit or whathaveyou.) I spend way way way more on sketchbooks because I'd rather waste decent paper on scratchwork than have to sketch on paper I don't like.

The main reason I like moleskines is because they have a hard back so I can write while walking, they have a little ribbon so I don't have to do any flipping during a MUST RECORD NOW moment, and they're the first notebook type to survive living in my pockets without falling to pieces within a month.

And of course, I write only in notebooks used by Matisse and Henry Miller, 'cause I'm not a philistine.

23:50 / 22.10.03

I don't think it's *pretentious* to draw in public; I just feel self-conscious doing it, because I don't feel ...worthy. And I'm not fishing for anybody to tell me that I am so worthy, I'm just saying how it is.

00:01 / 23.10.03

I usually rip out the first page to teach it who's boss.

I start writing on page two, usually!

Re: Bruce Chatwin, I was reading on the Moleskine website how he had a ritual about starting a new notebook: he would number all the pages & write his address in two places. And I love ritual. So I started numbering the pages in my new notebook & I was ten pages in and thinking, this is total bullshit. I had to blow on the numbers to dry the ink, and then I would forget what number I was on & still I soldiered on. Then I accidentally wrote on the first page, which I had skipped numbering. Now my new notebook has little scribbly scratch-outs at the bottom of every page.

07:38 / 23.10.03

Hmn. At university, I found the best way of taking notes was on these spiral-bound notebooks with tear-out pages. Thus I can store all my notes without them getting crumpled (as torn-off A4 sheets are wont to do when you ram them in the top of the full pad), and then, when I get home, tear out the pages and file them. They were great.

I got a pair of Moleskines for my 21st; the little one is for general notetaking, and has, remarkably, seen some use. The larger one has not yet, because it is for taking notes on travel or my novel or something like that. It may be a while before it sees use. I also have a Powerbook, which does a moderate amount of function as a storing-ground for random ideas. Full of tiny, half-finished text files.

09:29 / 23.10.03

Ahh, Persephone, this truly is a subject I love.

Re: The molskine debate. I won a free molskine notebook (as part of a package of things from iwantoneofthose.com) which I have since finished, and I don't think anyone judges you because you have one. It's not the sort of notebook I would normally use, but it did feel special to write and draw in. And I would contemplate buying one now that I have experienced owning one. Except that they're sodding expensive, and Paperchase ones are just as good and half the price. Still it was lovely to pretend to be the sort of person who does buy them for a little while.

I have lots of notebooks, ongoing and finished, and I've noticed that each one relates to how I was feeling at the time. I've had larey stripey ones, plain black ones, clear plastic bound ones. They do all tend to be hardback though, but that's because I make things tatty very quickly. Currently, I have a little one which fits in my handbag, one by my bed for dreams, a large one for general day to day when-I'm-in-my-house thoughts and a separte sketchbookwhich isn't very full as I usually find myself using my other notebooks.

I think it's interesting to go back through them years later, you can tell a lot about your state of mind at the time.

I also don't think it is pretentious to sketch in public, unless you're deliberately doing it to look like a person who sketches in public (if you know what I mean).

12:25 / 23.10.03

I've actually bought a new notebook entirely as a result of this thread, because it's made me realise how much more organised I was when I was working, and had access to an infinite supply of Red and Black notebooks. As well as project work, I used to keep them by my bed so I could write things I remembered before I went to sleep. Thus, for every script or program which I wrote out in it (in my programming handwriting, which is actually readable) there would be half a page with "BUY RAzors & go2 Bank" across it in a kind of 'potential serial killer' scrawl.

12:59 / 23.10.03

I'm planning to buy a new notebook at the weekend as well.

I tend to occasionally read my old notebooks and then think, "woah, that so much sums up something that is happening now", which then makes me think that everything I write in them is a repetition, and that I should stop writing in them.

Sometimes, I am scared that people might read them, and have thrown out entire diaries that I've had for decades (after strangely copying them out onto computer, of course) because of such paranoia. I've got better about that now though, but still don't like to write when someone else can see what I'm writing.

16:17 / 23.10.03

Mystified that you all love them so since I never use them. But I do have innumerable post-its, backs of envelopes, freebie postcards lying all over the shop, here and at work, with important things written on them which I shall continue happily to accumulate and ignore, till I die no doubt.

On holiday, I've sometimes kept a diary. Usually just a cheap wee spiral thingy. Still have some of those. And an old Nursing Officer once gave me a couple of policeman's notebooks which a visiting bobby had given her. They were great! Tiny, black, good hard covers back and front. Wee rubber band bit to hold everything together. All my notes to self began "I was proceeding in a northerly direction when..." though.

21:04 / 23.10.03

Xoc, if you don't cut it out, people are going to catch on about you and me being the same per... never mind. Forget I said anything.

22:07 / 23.10.03

Shhhhhhh

at the scarwash

02:47 / 24.10.03

I usually need a hardbound notebook, because they're always in my bag, and I always throw that around, sit on it, use it as a pillow when I pass out drunk at someone's house, etc. For a while I liked little mass-market paperback-sized books, but when I wanted to sketch, I'd get frustrated with the size, so now I use the 11 by 14s. I don't like writing on lined paper. Maybe on graph-ruled. That's so math-y. I used to keep seperate my diary, my book for so-called writing, and my sketchbook, for sort of ritual purposes, I guess. But then I'd not have one of the three on hand, and have to make do with writing in the sketcher, or sketching in the writer, and they all became amalgamated. I write in it from either end, and skip pages if I want to avoid seeing something produced before, so there is no order, and things appear at all orientations.

Moleskines are swank, but I lose everything nice I ever buy.

03:07 / 24.10.03

What would be cool would be a thread like th emix-tape thread where someone write, draws, pastes, whatever in one page and sends it to the next on the list..when the book is filled it gets scanned and posted on some webspace.

08:13 / 24.10.03

That would be cool. Come on, lets do it.

10:09 / 24.10.03

*cynical laugh* Ha ha! I recommend you take another look at those mixtape threads before you embark on such a scheme. It might just work if you restrict it to two people.

12:27 / 24.10.03

I'd definitely join in with the collaborative notebook thing.The 1000 Journal Project, and Nervousness seem to work quite well, so a Barbelith version might do as well.

15:51 / 24.10.03

I love that idea! Count me in, and I will provide the web services too!

16:48 / 24.10.03

Ok, Ill start a thread in Creation and see if we can throw together a concensus on how this thing should work so that it does indeed work.

18:00 / 24.10.03

And I thought I was the only one...

Been keeping both big spiral notebooks (with pocket folders so's I don't lose scraps) and small black hardcover sketchbook-type blank books for doodles, sketches, poetry, rants, jotting down good quotes, story ideas, lists, and whatnot for years. Since mid-high school anyways.

At times I wish I had kept all of them, but don't where I'd put them. I've moved quite a few times since I was 18 and I'm sure there's things scattered all over the place, though I guess that's a good thing in a way. Imagine moving into a house and you're exploring the basement and you find an old box full of junk containing an enigmatic notebook filled with pages of cryptic references, drawings, quotations and the like. Almost makes me want to deliberately plant things like that.

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