On Keeping a Notebook in the Digital Age
Like the title says, this is another article describing the virtues of keeping a notebook!
This talks about needing a place to dump all the ideas that come into your head. This is why I love notebooks: I've got volume after volume of binders full of journal entries, scenes from stories, sketches, research notes, etc. I need a place to keep all this information, whatever form it takes.
The main way my method differs from the author's (the author of this article) is that my notebooks are pretty organized. Well, maybe not that organized, but they're very structured. The writer of the article talks about using small notebooks to keep random, very disorganized notes. Of course the notebooks are already bound, whereas I use loose paper I keep in binders or folders. I've found that I just don't feel comfortable with the kind of notebooks described in this article. I like the freedom of using whatever paper I want, of being able to organize and reorganize, of having my journal entries and prose and sketches all separate, of being able to add things I've typed on the computer. For some, the systematic way I keep my notebooks might discourage using them. For me, personally, it creates a "comfort zone" (usually a bad thing, I know), and it's actually LESS intimidating.
That being said, having a "dumping ground" is important. Sometimes I have ideas that I write on scratch paper because I don't know where in my notebook to put them. The "Spark File" the article talks about made me think: should I have notebook pages that are full of random ideas that I accumulate over a period of time, like a week? It's something to consider. I should try it. :)
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