Two Ways to Use a Notebook

Donna Mazza

Two ways to use a notebook

After writing just about every day for over twenty years, I noticed something peculiar about my notebooks. When I keep a list or notes for the purposes of my administration work as an academic or for teaching, I work from the traditional front of a notebook to the back, just as the creators of notebooks intend. But when I write notes for my fiction or research, I start at the back of the notebook and work towards the front. It is usually a different notebook entirely, so this is not a plan for economical use of paper, but a subconscious approach to different types of writing of which I was not even aware until quite recently. This quirk or habit of mine is symbolic of the different approaches and different functions of writing, especially for a creative arts researcher.

Most administration and record keeping within universities and other institutions has made the leap from hard copy to the digital world. I write in my academic role to keep track of what I need to do and to record my thoughts at meetings (or occasionally sketch and embellish the page during less scintillating events). I might write while discussing things with a student or write some notes about ideas I have for my teaching. I like to put a big line through things I’ve completed, so some of these pages are very satisfying. This is a front-to-back kind of purpose for a notebook, driven by the logical processes of the rational world. These kind of notebooks sit in a heap in my cupboard and rarely see daylight again once those months are gone.

My back-to-front notebooks are more precious. These are the ones that I use to write short stories, poems, fragments of a one-day novel or the first, punchy paragraph of a review or essay. Writing by hand, with a pen on paper, allows me some visceral, embodied contact with my creative process which enables me to start work on a project. My children’s swimming lessons and soccer training are great opportunities for a moment with the muse but occasionally I find myself on the sidelines, without a notebook. Some of my best work is written on the reverse side of receipts for school fees and shopping lists, scrawled with a stray coloured pencil. I carefully number these in order and keep them in those handy little pockets in my back-to-front notebooks. Sometimes I resort to staples to avoid airborne receipts, inscribed with fiery thoughts being lost in the breeze.

These projects inevitably find their way to screen, but for a while at least they are a thing of paper, ink and hand. This handcrafting process is essential for me because that’s how the soul gets into my work. As a creative writer, this is the X-factor and, I believe, this X-factor is required for academic writing too (though frequently missing).

Thanks to my father, who wrangled my rebellious teenage self into typing classes at high school, I am very quick on the keyboard. All students of writing would benefit by spending some dull hours learning how to touch type. It saves so much time, which you can use wisely elsewhere. Once the transplantation to screen takes place, those rational processes come into play—to train the work into a form, which will hopefully be publishable.

Technology allows us to change, edit, shift, copy, paste, draft and re-draft endlessly where the handwritten draft soon becomes a great mess this way. It’s quite wonderful and, as most writers know, this is more work by far than those fevered moments of a first draft, which can often seem like a golden time long past when you are working on the final draft, many months or years later. I’m sure Ernest Hemingway, Mary Shelley or Charlotte Bronte would have been very pleased with such a contraption in their day to make their writing lives easier.