I stumbled across an interesting website this week: First Today, Then Tomorrow, written by professional writer Randy Murray. I’m still perusing the articles, but I was taken by three articles entitled Three Rules of Proper Notebook Management:
With so much bullshit written about notebooks, and particularly about a certain brand of notebook that despite what the marketing department may claim were most definitely NOT used by Van Gogh and Ernest Hemingway, these three short articles are a breath of fresh air.
The answers to the questions posed by the articles sum them up perfectly:
- Everything.
- Whatever is available.
- It doesn’t matter.
My favourite piece of advice concerns What To Write In Your Notebook:
A notebook kept for a single purpose will likely go unused. A general notebook, well managed, is a mass of ideas, reminders, and observations.
In the few days since reading that single sentence I’ve written more in my notebook than the preceding few weeks. Good advice.