Figuring Out How to Keep a Notebook

For writers, and other observant people.

I am so enamored by the idea of a writer’s notebook. I love mine, but I always feel like I’m not quite doing it right. Jack London probably did it better. Or Joan Didion.

In fact, I’m sure they did it better. I struggle to even call what I keep a writer’s notebook. In fact, I’m not sure that I like the idea that only a writer should keep a notebook.

I also am iffy on journal. I like diary better, but it’s not really what I’m looking for. I really love the idea of a Commonplace Book, and I think that my notebook is partly that. But Commonplace Book is pretty much only about other people’s ideas.

So far, I’ve stuck with calling mine an Everyday Notebook.

I’m reading Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, Volume One, right now.

It’s a book, of course, but it reads like a writer’s notebook. (And it’s so, so good.) Toward the beginning there’s this. I’m not sure if it’s ever struck anyone else, but it stood out to me.

I gazed past Billy, past his chair through his window across the street to an office building where I could see a blazing secretary soaked up in the spirit of something — she was scribbling busy, occupied at a desk in a meditative manner. There was nothing funny about her. I wished I had a telescope.

That’s what I want for my notebook. I want to notice things and record them. Dylan noticed that secretary in 1961. He wrote about her in his book in 2004. Man. I bet in 1961, the year 2004 was so far away and so futuristic. Science fiction futuristic. The world was still eight years from putting a man on the moon.

I can’t imagine that Dylan, who had just taken his first $100 advance against song royalties, could have imagined what 2004 had in store for him, or for his memory of that secretary. I also don’t know whether he kept a notebook where he wrote something about her.

It seems possible.

I thought it might be interesting to work on a weekly series of posts about notebook keeping.

I wish that I could make bullet journaling work for me. It’s just one of those weird things — everything about it seems custom made for me, but I’ve never been able to make it coalesce.

Part of the problem is that I’m just not a very visually artistic person, but I want to be. So, I try to do these fancy layouts and be all super organized about it, and that lasts for roughly three days.

Part of it is that I want less structure. Fewer symbols and rules (even if they are simple.)

And part is that I need to feel like I can just write everything in one place. I don’t want to feel like I’m going to mess up my pretty layout.

After a lifetime of buying notebooks because they were pretty and then grabbing one when I had something to write down — so that I was left with dozens of partially filled books at the end of a year — two years ago I bought this notebook and only used it for the whole year.

I just started my third volume. I’m not perfect at this notebook keeping thing yet. In fact, this series of posts I’m planning is at least as much for me as it is for you. My first notebook got a Diet Pepsi bath in my purse about three quarters of the way through the year. The second one wasn’t used as much as I wish it had been.

I want to get better at keeping an Everyday Notebook. If keeping a notebook is something that appeals to you, too, let’s figure it out together.

The Week’s Notebook Idea

​​This week, find your Everyday Notebook. You can use the same one I do. You might have something already that will work. Whatever, just make it something that you’ll be comfortable carrying with you pretty much all the time.

That might mean using something much smaller and using several in a year. If that’s what works for you, just start with one, fill it completely, then go on to the next.

Make a goal this week of keeping your notebook with you all the time. And use it. Write in it. Write lists. Work on your stories. Whatever you have going on this week, make your notebook part of it.

I’ll be back next Sunday with the next installment in this series. Let me know here if you’d like me to let you know when that posts.

Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher. She is an out-of-place Nevadan living in Northwestern PA with her husband, three superstar kids, two dementia patients, a good friend, Alfred the cat, and a yellow rescue dog named Maybelline Scout. She is the author of Viral Nation and Rebel Nationand the upcoming novel The Astonishing Maybe. She is the original Ninja Writer. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.