Get Me Writing

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For our anniversary, my wife bought me a new notebook. She knows my strange affection for stationary (not that strange. Behave), and so got me a very nice leather bound journal. Of course, I want to use it, but am not sure what I’ll be putting in it yet, so am looking for suggestions.

I’ve pretty much got my journalling sorted out. I’ve written about journals, and specifically about my own before, but to sum up – I use my blog to reflect and organise my thoughts on my own writing experience. Most other things also go in an electronic format, so if I have some notes for a story, or whole sections, they either go in my iPod Touch (if on the move), or in my highly organised project folder, which sits on all my computers and is synced through Dropbox. This, I must say, is a rather successful system, and I don’t feel like I’ve missed out on any notes or moments of reflection because of this.

Now there’s this journal. I almost don’t want to write in it, because it’s such a nice item, and I wouldn’t want to “spoil” it. On the other hand of course, it is a notebook, and should be used. And it was a gift, intended to be used.

So, what to do with it? Where can it fit in my system? I’m really not sure at the moment, but there are at least some restrictions to its use that I can think of:

• I prefer my notes to be electronic. This is because copying things up is extremely dull, and having lots of notebooks runs the risk of them being lost or never read. Therefore anything that does get noted down must be brief, and probably not something that would need to be copied up.
• The book itself is rather small, being A6. This means I can carry it around easily, but again puts restrictions on what can go in it. It’s certainly not appropriate for rambling paragraphs, but might be better suited for lists (for example).
• I want it to have a very specific purpose. What I don’t want is to have random assortments of notes for various stories mixed in with actual sections of stories, diary entries, lists and ideas. One purpose, so that I know to always go to this journal for this specific thing. I would add to that that it should ideally solve some problem not remedied by the rest of my system.

That’s my problem, and I’d like to appeal to my readers for a possible solution. I’ve had the notebook a while now and still haven’t thought of anything to do with it, so any suggestions welcome. Feel free to chat about your journalling (made up word?) methods in the comments below. I would be especially interested to read that you have more than one journal and what you use them each for.

Oh, and the image is of the actual notebook, which you can get here (via the longest URL in the world). It’s nice, huh? And mine is embossed with my initials, so it’s even nicer