starting a new notebook

a list of fears

It is time. It is time to select a New Notebook in which I will jot down my Creative Musings and Thoughts while on Trains and At 4am When I Can’t Sleep.

Huge news, actually. Last new notebook was in 2022 when I started writing the live show I’m about to tour, and since then - because I’ve worked on other people’s projects rather than my own - I’ve had a notepad, which is very different to a Notebook. A notepad is throwaway and can contain ideas for various work stuff alongside shopping lists, the number of a guy who might sort out the weeds in the yard, or your HMRC government gateway ID. You know, unimportant stuff that you don’t need to look at again.

A Notebook is for a Passion Project. Most Christmases my mum will buy me a nice notebook, so I’ve got a few lined up ranging from ‘that looks smart’ to ‘is that the magical tome of the Warren line of witches, featured in the early 00s series Charmed?’. Another has pages made of pulped leaves, so you can’t use a biro (or any pen, really) to write in it because the paper is bumpy with mulch.

Every time I get a new notebook out, I have to force myself to start. There is great resistance. Of course, as with everything, this great resistance implies that it’s not about the notebook. Nothing is ever about the thing you think it is.

I did a podcast episode on my old podcast Nobody Panic about How To Have A Nice Bath because I hated baths, and it became a deep dive into my perfectionism intersecting with a distaste for self care. Love baths now. I drink cold Ribena to stop my face getting hot (there’s something weird about drinking water when you’re lying in water. I really mean that), have some magazines on the go, and if I want to get out after 15 minutes that is absolutely fine. I have not failed baths.

Anyway.

Here are the reasons I am resistant to starting a new notebook. Maybe you’ll relate, maybe you won’t, I guess that’s just the beauty of the human experience.

That I’ll make a mistake

Obviously this is the big one, so let’s get it out of the way first. This notebook has been lovingly crafted to be used by a whimsical creative sat in a cafe overlooking a piazza to aid their creation of the Great American Novel. Or any novel, but Great American Novel just sounds better doesn’t it.

Unfortunately I’m the one who has been bought this notebook, so I will write the wrong date on page one (it’s not 2024 ffs), try to turn the errant four into a five which is obviously impossible, then have to cross the entire thing out. This bothers me because you should start a notebook as you mean to go on, and I don’t wish to go on as someone who doesn’t know what year it is.

I’m not embarrassed in case somebody reads it and sees the mistake - nobody is going to read it, because I’m sorting out my will at the moment (bit of fun) and am including the stipulation that all my notebooks are to be cremated with me, along with my childhood stuffed toy monkey.

There’s a lot of stress re the monkey because this only works on the basis that he will die the moment I die. O, the arrogance of man! This monkey has spent a lifetime in service, dealing with a baby snotting on him, a toddler crying on him, a teenager leaving him at home, and an adult woman bringing him into the bed when she is throwing a benny and/or riddled with covid and ‘just wants a bit of her childhood’, and how do I repay him? By burning him alive next to my corpse. Fucking terrifying.

You know what, he’ll probably be fine. I don’t think he can feel pain because when I was six I put him in the washing machine, his eye fell out, and he didn’t look that arsed.

Anyway I’m not embarrassed in case people read the mistakes in my notebook, I’m just very bored of yet again being forced to confront the enormity of my own failings. The interminable mundanity of my personal calamities. Oh, boiled the kettle without checking whether there’s any water in it again? Then forgot and tried to do it a second and third time? Then forgot to pour the tea? Then forgot to drink the tea? Christ alive, it really isn’t about the notebook is it.

I’ll lose the pen and the only pen I’ll have to hand will be blue

Let’s get back on track, notebook-wise. This is because a friend of mine who is the opposite of me only writes in black ink. I find this violently classy.

When you look at beautiful old books (as featured in Charmed, for example) the ink is always black. It’s rarely black, then a bit of blue, and some green which is then followed by furious squiggles as it starts to run out and you don’t have any pens left.

Also (another) sidebar, imagine knowing yourself so well you can confidently say you’re the sort of person who only writes with black pens! Someone on a podcast asked me what my favourite music video was and I just… evaporated. Sure, it’s Eminem Stan. But is it? What if it’s not?! What if I’ve forgotten a really obvious one, and it’s sat in the corner of my brain going ‘Oh. I guess you have no memory of me. Thanks’. I suppose I can confidently say I’m the sort of person who can’t decide what they like or dislike because they have no spinal column and/or memories. Cool. End of sidebar.

I want my ideas and thoughts for my New Project to be aesthetically pleasing and consistent, because then I’ll feel like a Good Creative Woman. In my brief TikTok foray (Summer 2023 - End Of Summer 2023), the algorithm showed me hundreds of writers showing off their notebooks full of doodles and musings and stickers and ticket stubs, artfully arranged. All black ink except for the odd well-judged illustration. I want to be like that!

People say ‘tidy room, tidy life’ so by that logic, chaotic notebook, chaotic project. Multiple pen colours, no coherent ideas. I’m obsessed with asking creatives if they use wall charts and post-it notes because whenever I’ve tried it, I just sort of pop some things on a wall in no particular order, become confused as to what this is supposed to be achieving, and leave them up there for 6-8 months before the adhesive wears down and my dog eats them off the floor.

Sometimes I look at the state of my notepads and wonder how I’ve managed to write or produce anythi - The Fatboy Slim one where Christopher Walken dances!!!! Obviously that’s the best one.

The notebook is too nice, making me feel like an imposter.

Sort of like tourist walkers who buy all the fancy kit. Proper walkers, as we all know, have their boots broken in and wear jackets used as tents, rolled up as pillows, weed on by foxes and then boned (also by foxes). You want to feel like a proper creative, but in doing so can shoot yourself in the notebook foot.

The equivalent of tourist walkers with all the fancy kit is one of those hardback notebooks from Oliver Bonas with IdEaS aNd DrEaMs on the cover. As in, it says that on the cover with words. No judgement if your notebooks say this; when I did the first proper run of my live show clout I was so stressed that I bought a notebook that said FEMALE POWER on the front to use as my diary for the month, and whenever I got it out of my bag in public I wanted to die. Or explain that I’m not a girl boss from 2010 but someone who understands the flippancy of slogans and has read many books and I’m not just another flighty white feminist oh god I’m so sorry etc.

But it was nice and helpful at a difficult time. However, sometimes it’s not helpful to overdo it. In 2018 I tried to write a novel and it went appallingly (before you say anything, no it’s not ‘better than you think it is’ and ‘maybe send it to someone for a second opinion’, I read it back a few months ago and can confirm all five attempts are - forgive my French - a pile of wanké) which isn’t solely down to the fact I bought a £25 hardback notebook with my initials monogrammed on the spine, but I’m certain it was partly to blame.

The perfect notebook is actually a notebookpad. Not hard enough (oo-er etc) to be a notebook, not flaccid (hehe) enough to be a notepad. I only managed this once, and I don’t know where I got it from so will never repeat the experience, and it’s worth mentioning the notebookpad was used during my first job as a copywriter for a Careers Advisory website, so was full of such exciting nuggets as ‘finish writing plumber apprenticeship blogpost’ and ‘schedule tweets of todays job listings’. Such a waste.

It’s possible that a) I’m overthinking this and b) it’s maybe about balance?

On one hand, life’s too short to be intimidated by your own notebook, but on the other hand, you do need to romanticise the creative process a little in order to get in the right mindset. Also, if you can’t write ideas for a New Project in a nice notebook what’s the point of living in late stage capitalism?

So go buy a nice one, but maybe not one that scares you.

What if the book is secretly a portal to hell and I begin communing with Satan

This is a dream I had five years ago that recurred last night and, if we’re all being honest, is the main inspiration behind this post. Yeah I dreamt I was writing some ideas (a play about animals, perhaps Animal Farm) but the words became too well-etched into the paper, as though in stone, and I had the seeping, cloying realisation that He was watching me. A terrifying snorting sound began to build in the room and I can’t tell you who He was (A GOAT MAN???) but I woke up with the cold certainty of an evil presence in the room that had nothing to do with the fact my partner had turned onto his back and was making noises similar to that of a distant freight train or a close-up hog.

I don’t think I have to worry about this with my new notebook, I just thought it worth recording for posterity.

My idea is not good enough for this notebook

The final point. The ongoing sadness that this notebook should be used by someone writing a book chronologically from start to finish with a quill. Or just writing anything from start to finish. Or just writing anything in a coherent way. In the aforementioned piazza, of course.

My New Project always starts with 17 competing projects interrupted by furious squiggles as the pen runs out and intermittent inspirational missives to myself such as COME ON JUST PICK SOMETHING AND STICK TO IT. Or, in my most recent notebook, GOD THIS IS ALL SHITTTTT.

I suppose I can’t really do anything about this but push the thought out of my mind. It’s just a notebook. It’s not a TV commissioner or a publisher or a reviewer or whatever, but an array of incredibly thin dead trees. What do trees know about sitcom outlines or sketch ideas? Fuck all. If I was writing about meristem growth or ‘having lots of branches’ then fair enough, I’d seek their counsel.

One thing I know to be true: the self doubt keeps me frozen until the discomfort of being frozen becomes worse than said self doubt, leading the dam to burst and, crucially, me going ‘well fuck it’ and just making something. This is what always happens. I simply must continue onwards.

Also, this entire post could have been summed up with the sentence: ‘chill out, it’s just a notebook’, but if I’d typed that and stopped, we wouldn’t have had sO mUcH fUn, would we.

While writing this I became emboldened to go to my cupboard of new notebooks and pluck one out for a laugh. It is blue with a sort of old fashioned pattern on the front as though a Victorian pharmacist may use it to keep track of tinctures. Confusingly it also has the word ‘LIFE’ on it, but I don’t mind.

I opened the first page and it’s a shopping list from 2023 so a) I’ve wrecked it before I’ve even started, which really takes the pressure off b) it’s soft-backed and small so doesn’t feel intimidating and c) it’ll be useful if I scrap my ideas and decide to become an apothecarist.

I guess I’ll end with: if you’ve been putting off starting something, and coming up with excuses like ‘i’m frightened of my notebook what if it’s a portal to Satan’, this is your sign to start it. I’ll see you on the other side, when I’ve perhaps finished whatever my new thing is, in five hundred years time.

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