Category: Journaling

  • You Know You’re a Writer When…

    You Know You’re a Writer When…

    Whenever someone asks me what I do for a living, I always balk at the idea of saying, “I’m a writer.”

    The reason is that I don’t make a living by my writing. I aspire to, of course, but if we’re basing things on paychecks, and most people do, then I’m a teacher. However, were I to die mysteriously, and the cops came to my home to investigate, the lead detective would undoubtedly proclaim, “Well, she was a writer.”

    Now, isn’t that a heartening thought?

    This morbid notion popped into my head yesterday as I was avoiding work by tidying up my writing nook. So, how would said detective figure out my secret identity of “Writer?” as she searched my home?

    #1: Writers Tend to Collect Notebooks

    NotebooksLet’s start with my stack of five beautiful notebooks, most still empty, that I’ve collected over the course of this past year. Don’t roll your eyes at me. Five is a fantastic example of self-restraint, people!  I could easily have bought so many more.

    Haven’t you ever caught sight of a notebook, sighed as you picked it up, caressed its cover and flipped through the blank pages, tracing your fingers down the perfect lines printed therein to feel the grain of the paper?  No? Huh.  Weird.  

    What is it about notebooks that I find so irresistible?

    Maybe it’s the potential of an empty notebook that attracts me. So many pages to be filled. So much potential fun to be had in the process of filling said pages. Obviously, I write on a computer (ahem), but whenever I’m feeling blue or restless or romantic or nostalgic or anxious, I turn to the comfort that comes with grabbing a beloved writing implement and making marks on paper in a notebook. Every morning, I journal three pages of whatever dribbles out of my brain before my day gets going. (That’s a tiny lie. I grind the beans and ready the french press and pour myself a mug of coffee first). It’s wonderful, and for my morning pages I have a favorite fountain pen dedicated to that activity and no other.

    That brings me to the second piece of evidence that the detective would use to identify me post-mortem as a Writer: my collection of fountain pens.

    #2: Writers Tend to Collect Pens  

    Pens and NotebooksI doubt there’s a writer alive who doesn’t understand my love affair with notebooks. I mean, I can’t go into a store and not wander until I find the office supply aisle so I can check to make sure they don’t have a fabulous notebook that must be rescued and taken home. And if it’s an office supply store? Forget about it.

    But not everyone knows the secret joys of a good fountain pen. I’ve written before of my pen obsession in my post about Scrivener. The pen affair started  with me watching the Quentin Tarantino film Inglorious Bastards.

    Uh… you fell in love with fountain pens watching a movie about killing Nazis?

    You bet I did! Early on in the film, there is a quiet and yet hyper-intense interrogation scene in which Christoph Waltz’s character pulls out a 1940’s era fountain pen, disassembles it, inks it carefully, reassembles it, and begins to record information. The scene wasn’t even over before I thought to myself, “I have GOT to get a fountain pen!”

    So, I did. After a bit of online research (unsurprisingly, there is a thriving online community of people even more obsessed with fountain pens than I am), I settled on a Pilot Metropolitan in a respectable black finish.

    Fountain Pens
    Note that my gold pen is NOT there. The gold pen is private.

    That’s not the pen I journal with, though.

    See, I loved that first fountain pen so much that I bought another one with a silver finish to match it. Then I bought one with a gold finish. That third pen turned out to be my favorite, and it’s the one I journal with every morning. Then I bought… more fountain pens.

    I’m up to nine now. When I finish my master’s program in creative writing at Lesley University this summer, I plan on treating myself to a gorgeous retractable fountain pen that I tested out at the Bromfield Pen Shop in Boston. It’s a little pricier than my $20 Metropolitans, but it’s SO going to be worth it.

    The thing about fountain pens is this, though. They require the proper paper to be truly enjoyed.

    #3: Writers (sometimes) Know Way Too Much About Paper

    You can’t just grab any old notebook and write in it with a fountain pen. The moment you try, and I’m speaking from direct personal experience here, you will discover (perhaps for the first time) that not all paper is the same. In fact, most paper in most notebooks is crap. The second you touch even an extra fine fountain pen nib to a sheaf of paper, the quality of that paper will be revealed by how much bleeding and feathering of ink you get.  Bond weight is a thing I now ask (hapless) salespeople about, as is paper finish and fiber blend.

    And what I now know is this: there is NO relationship between the price of a notebook and the quality of the paper within.

    Moleskin? Bleck. Those lovely leather bound tomes of blank pages adorning the shelves at Barnes and Noble? Ugh. You’d better choose a subpar writing implement if you’re going to use those babies to record your deep thoughts or your next best seller. The 25 cent, one subject, spiral bound Staples brand notebooks? Glorious. The paper handles a fountain pen like a dream.

    Which is why, when madam detective moves from my writing desk adorned with my stack of lovely notebooks and my somewhat ridiculous collection of fountain pens (and inks. So many inks, but I won’t go there), to open the office closet, she will stand and gape at the stack of almost forty 1-subject Staples brand notebooks that I’ve hoarded there.  Hey, you never know when Staples stops making those bad boys or changes the paper they use in them.

    In conclusion, I pay the bills by teaching, and so I’m prone to telling people that I’m a “Teacher.”  In my heart (and my psyche), however, I am a Writer and I’ve left plenty of evidence to prove it.

    Do you have a favorite pen that you love? Are you a sucker for a blank notebook with a pretty cover? Come one, I know I’m not the only one with this affliction.

  • Morning Pages, Procrastination, and Creativity

    Morning Pages, Procrastination, and Creativity

    As part of my master’s program, I’m required to take an independent studies class each semester. It can’t be a course that is directly related to my primary area of study, which is writing for young people. Lesley University offers courses that run the gambit from travel writing to poetry to writing for stage and screen to memoir writing and more. They also offer a class that isn’t about writing, specifically. It’s about creativity, and the point is to help folks knock down mental barriers and find creative solutions.

    It’s called The Artist’s Way, and I picked it as my very first I.S. class to take. Am I ever glad that I did! To help you wrap your brain around what it is, let me quote Carrie Battan from her 2016 article in the New Yorker about the book (the class I took followed the book to the letter).

    “…the book is a program designed to help readers reject the devils of self-doubt on their shoulders and pursue creative activity not as a profession but as a form of therapy.”

    That’s as good a summary as any. Thank you, Ms. Battan.

    Part of the course, a big part, is engaging in daily journaling, what The Artist’s Way creator Julie Cameron refers to as the “Morning Pages.” The goal is to increase creativity by connecting with the dark places in our heads, facing them down and disarming them of their power.  While taking the class, I sat down each morning and wrote three pages of mental stream-of-consciousness stuff into a notebook. I chose to write in cursive because more and more scientific studies show that longhand writing, and cursive writing, in particular, is super good for the brain.

    Since taking the twelve-week course last July/August/September, I’ve continued to write my morning pages. My spouse joined me, too, since he’s a fine art photographer and generally creative individual. Together, we’ve worked morning journaling into our lives as a way to boost creativity and also control our general anxieties and stress levels.

    Last night, I couldn’t fall asleep because I was worried about this blog project. How much time is this project was going to eat up? Time is my most limited resource. I am stretched more thinly that I can actually see. Only when others point out to me all the stuff I have on my plate do I realize the madness of it all. Parent to two young ones, both of whom were involved in town-league sports this spring, high school teacher, member of a writing group, member of an environmental group, student in a master’s program…

    On top of all of that, I am a master of productive procrastination.

    When I get overwhelmed, my brain resists dealing with the work that NEEDS to get done by finding and focusing on non-essential work. Sometimes “non-essential work” looks like cleaning my kitchen, or getting caught up on laundry, or vacuuming and dusting the entire house, or re-organizing the bookshelf, or (and this was the thing that was keeping me from my Z’s last night) figuring out WordPress and putting together a personal blog.  It feels like a form of creativity, and I suppose that it is (in a way), but it’s not the primary form of creativity that I’m hoping to nurture.

    Did I just generate yet another thing to add to my already ridiculously over-packed plate? Did I unintentionally create a thing that makes me feel like I’m doing something that will help me achieve my goals as a creative writer, but that actually pushes me further away from those goals by siphoning off a little of my most limited resource?

    Ah-ha! Solution!

    Rather than add this blog project to the long list of things I’m already doing, maybe I can make an even exchange. I can use this as my morning pages, and that way, I won’t be adding anything, just continuing something that I’ve been doing in a slightly different form. Not every day. I can’t give up my long-form writing altogether. It makes my brain feel too good. But a few times a week, in the morning slot that I’ve already carved into my daily routine for journaling, instead of grabbing my fountain pen and my notebook, I’ll grab my laptop and generate my three pages of stream-of-conscious gobbledygook here. It’s worth a try at least.

    Do you find yourself crunched for time in your life? How do you make room for it all? Do you ever sabotage your goals by procrastinating? What does that look like for you, and how do you get yourself back on track?