Notebook Mania; It's a Writer Thing

 I don't know a single writer who doesn't have at least two caches of notebooks--one that is used notebooks that we wouldn't dream of tossing and one that is empty notebooks with fresh clean pages awaiting words of wisdom, random thoughts, to-do lists, word counts, and words, always, always new words. 

Hi, I'm Nan and I'm a notebook junkie. At any given time when I'm writing, I'm consulting at least two, generally three notebooks in which I've written down stuff I want to remember about whatever the current story is that I'm working on. There is a special notebook for each series--the Flahertys, the Langes, the Weavers, and now the Walkers--each series gets its own notebook. That doesn't mean I don't go back and reference the Flaherty notebook when I'm writing the Langes or the Langes when I'm writing the Weavers. There's always a chance I didn't use a thought I jotted it down while I was working on Sean Flaherty's book. Maybe I can use it--the scene, the conversation, the perfect word--in Jenny Weaver's story. 

So as I'm writing, the notebooks are strewn across my desk. Here's the rub--the notes in them are in no particular order. Yeah, I know. Daunting if I'm trying to find a word or a conversation I know for certain I've noted at some random point, because I have to cruise through at least three notebooks to find it. I remember that I wrote it down...the question is where?

My favorite place to buy notebooks is Tuesday Morning. I buy one nearly every time I go into that amazing store. 

This one with the birds came from there--it's the Lange Brothers notebook.  I'm using the green one that my lovely friend, Sharon, gave me to process all the heart stuff. It has a wonderful marbleized frontispiece and I treasure it because Sharon is so dear. 

I have one with a fox that I found at a garage sale for a quarter and it has all the notes for the Weaver Sisters. The one with the Eiffel Tower is my travel journal--it has copious notes from our time in Paris and Ireland. I'll take it with me with I go to Hawaii with Son next month. The black one is a small notebook that my friend Charlie gave me when Husband got his cancer diagnosis--it has my thoughts and feelings about that time. It was good to be able to process all that on paper and to look back and see how well we coped with that terrible scary time. 

I could show you a bunch of others, but I suck at putting pictures into Blogger and besides, I think this may only be fascinating to me... we could talk about pens... Well, maybe another time. 

One more thought, though. One of favorite things to give away as swag is my River's Edge map notebook. See it down there? Liz and I haunt Dollar Generals and Dollar Trees for these little babies, then I have stickers made at Staples and put them on the front cover. Fun! I gave them away when I was promoting The Fireman's Christmas Wish. I'll be using them again when I do promotion for the first Weaver Sisters book, Home to River's Edge which releases April 18, 2023, so watch for them. Who knows? You could end up with a River's Edge map notebook. They're small, they fit in your purse, but they're also fat and have lots of pages for lots of notes. 

Tell me about your favorite notebooks, Wranglers. Do you love then with spirals on the side? On the top? Are you a fan of sewn notebooks? The ones that the pages tear off from a rubber strip at the top? Lined paper or plain? 

And yes, somehow, I managed to write an entire blog about notebooks... who knew paper could be so fascinating?

Stay well, stay safe (keep that mask handy), be kind, and most of all--find a notebook you love!