Sunday, April 11, 2010

Notebooks are time machines

Notebooks. I can't live without them. I have a huge drawer in my room that has only one purpose, to hold all of the many notebooks I've filled. I always keep my current notebook in my purse so that I have somewhere to write down my best thoughts.
Why? Because I've learned that when you have a brilliant idea and you think you don't need to write it down because it's so great you will remember it... you always forget. And then it drives you crazy trying to remember what it was. Keeping a notebook is like keeping notes to yourself in the future. It's a record of your ideas so that they won't be lost. My notebook drawer is the first place I go when I need inspiration.
Writing notes to yourself is a genuine form of time travel. Your thoughts are transmitted to your future self, and you usually forget that you wrote them down in the meantime, so it always comes as a pleasant surprise out of the past.
And what kinds of things do I write in my notebooks? I was just looking through some of my old notebooks, and besides notes from church and random lists, here are some fun things I found:

Literature is like a window into another person's life, and all the God created truths it contains within the circumstances, feelings and soul of the person. Good literature mirrors life, in that even when the situation is nothing you have ever or ever will experience, you can recognize a bit of yourself in the thoughts and motivations of the characters...
[Hmm, sounds very much like what I wrote in this post. I guess I think the same way now as I did two years ago when this notebook was filled.]

4 days until doom hits the world in the shape of frenzied novelists!
[Written four days before Nanowrimo, obviously.]

Haiku
Calm still pool reflects
Twisted, ancient, beautiful
A tree in moonlight
Also in my notebooks are many "Plot Thoughts" as I call them. Ususally in the form of several rambling pages of notes about a new story idea I have, which is why I didn't type any here. : )

~Jane~

P.S. This is my 50th post!

1 comment:

Grace said...

Very good idea, Jane!!! I always forget those great ideas that come to you in like the middle of activity or errand that you are doing.Sometimes I have a notebook by my bed too or in the car, just in case of those brainstorms:)
In Christ,
Grace