Weekly Writing Prompt No. 71. I love a good notebook and even though I spent over 30 years working in IT there was always something about the feel of paper and pen. The act of writing words by hand is soothing and has helped me hugely over many years, but it has to be the right notebook and the right pen.
My perfect writing day only happens a few times a year. It starts with a uphill walk through a field that generally has a small flock of sheep grazing in it. On the far side of the field I unlock a gate and enter my wooded sanctuary. It is the coppice where I carry out my logging business. On this day all is quiet and I continue on up the hill towards the centre of the woods and a clearing. This is no fairy tale clearing. On a working day it is noisy and dusty. Today all is quite. In one corner there is an old shepherds hut that I built years ago to act as a shelter if it rained while we were working. I unlock the door and slip inside. The first thing I do, summer or winter, is light the wood stove and put the kettle on. I like my tea. The door stays open unless it is raining, so I have a link to my surroundings other than the window. After a few minutes the woods comes back to life. The wildlife believing I have gone and left them to it. The logs crackle on the fire and the kettle gently simmers but apart from that the only noise is that of the woods. In the winter the wind rustles the trees and the branches creak. If it rains you can hear it pattering on the roof. This truly is my perfect writing place.
A perfect writing day follows a good sleep, proper breakfast and long shower. It precedes decent, civilised conversation and a nice hot cocoa. (Or mild, decaff coffee made with coconut milk, accompanied by gluten-free chocolate brownies).
It does, of course, involve beautiful, smooth writing paper and a well-behaved pen of balance and perfect hue, but not too much weight; I prefer a lighter pen, being such a weakling generally.
There is natural light; steady so not as to disturb the rhythm of my thoughts with flickering, nor changes due to variable cloud cover.
My family are all occupied elsewhere and I have peace in my book-lined paradise: my thoughts aligned decorously, prepared.
It is quiet. Still. No outside noise. At all. Zero.
I would love to get to a place where "my thoughts aligned decorously, prepared." they never do, they are all hodge podge and flying this way and that. It sounds perfect.
The perfect notebook, much like the perfect camera, is the one you have with you. I generally have several on the go. The beautiful Flametree hardback notebooks are my for journalling (Morning Pages, reflections, prompted meditations and the like). They are sumptuous and gorgeous and truly special - which means the writing inside them doesn't have to be. Someone once told me that if something is important we should treat it accordingly. Journaling is sanity-savingly, live-changingly important to me. It deserves a beautiful book. (Oh, yes, A5 because I cheat on the Morning Pages prescription!)
Then there is all the writing I do outdoors - that needs something smaller - pocket sized. Something I won't mind getting soggy. I scribble in these on beaches, in woods, in the reed beds, bird hides, on trains, at bus-stops,. I write in them when the sun is burning my neck, or frost is freezing my fingers, or the ink is bleeding in the rain. They are cheap. They get culled.
I keep my journals. My field books are mined and then discarded.
Me too Lesley, my morning pages are in an A5 journal too. I have no idea what I'd write if I thought I had to fill three A4 pages. I love that wonderful phrase you created that "Journaling is sanity-savingly, live-changingly important", it says it all, simply.
The perfect writing day is always a problem one. It starts around three a.m. One or another of her characters can’t sleep so it’s time to throw grit in Denarii’s eyes, pull her hair, jump up and down on the pillows and shout into her ear, “Hey you. Get up!”
“Go away,” she replies, “and come back at a more civilised time… Say, after six.”
“Oh, so you don’t want this amazing phrase, this line you spent all day yesterday chasing, then?”
The threat of forgetting such a perfect piece of prose is just too much. So, on goes the light and she picks up her pen, takes down the dictation verbatim then tries to sleep again.
Half past five: she gives up. It’s getting too noisy in there; the rest of the dramatis personae have now got involved.
So, up and into the living room; a pot of coffee per two hundred processed words. In just a few hours she’ll tell the world a tale. So long as it leaves her undisturbed.
The strange thing is, the one line she will discard is the very darling that woke her. The words will be wrong, too flowery, too much the product of a half dreaming mind.
Love this, Denarii. The sense of achievement and disappointment enveloped in a single emotion. Like a mother waving children off into the world; job done.
My darlings and I have reached an accommodation: so long as I acknowledge them, repeat them a couple of times, they quieten....and they have to come back at that more civilised hour if they want to be heard. The deal is: if they do, I promise to write them down and find a home for them.
Those darlings are the ones that always leave me flummoxed too Denarii. And like you, they are always the ones that are deleted in the first set of edits. As you so rightly sigh, oh well!
My perfect writing day only happens a few times a year. It starts with a uphill walk through a field that generally has a small flock of sheep grazing in it. On the far side of the field I unlock a gate and enter my wooded sanctuary. It is the coppice where I carry out my logging business. On this day all is quiet and I continue on up the hill towards the centre of the woods and a clearing. This is no fairy tale clearing. On a working day it is noisy and dusty. Today all is quite. In one corner there is an old shepherds hut that I built years ago to act as a shelter if it rained while we were working. I unlock the door and slip inside. The first thing I do, summer or winter, is light the wood stove and put the kettle on. I like my tea. The door stays open unless it is raining, so I have a link to my surroundings other than the window. After a few minutes the woods comes back to life. The wildlife believing I have gone and left them to it. The logs crackle on the fire and the kettle gently simmers but apart from that the only noise is that of the woods. In the winter the wind rustles the trees and the branches creak. If it rains you can hear it pattering on the roof. This truly is my perfect writing place.
A perfect writing day follows a good sleep, proper breakfast and long shower. It precedes decent, civilised conversation and a nice hot cocoa. (Or mild, decaff coffee made with coconut milk, accompanied by gluten-free chocolate brownies).
It does, of course, involve beautiful, smooth writing paper and a well-behaved pen of balance and perfect hue, but not too much weight; I prefer a lighter pen, being such a weakling generally.
There is natural light; steady so not as to disturb the rhythm of my thoughts with flickering, nor changes due to variable cloud cover.
My family are all occupied elsewhere and I have peace in my book-lined paradise: my thoughts aligned decorously, prepared.
It is quiet. Still. No outside noise. At all. Zero.
That is how I write all my prose of nonpareil.
Unpublished.
I would love to get to a place where "my thoughts aligned decorously, prepared." they never do, they are all hodge podge and flying this way and that. It sounds perfect.
The perfect notebook, much like the perfect camera, is the one you have with you. I generally have several on the go. The beautiful Flametree hardback notebooks are my for journalling (Morning Pages, reflections, prompted meditations and the like). They are sumptuous and gorgeous and truly special - which means the writing inside them doesn't have to be. Someone once told me that if something is important we should treat it accordingly. Journaling is sanity-savingly, live-changingly important to me. It deserves a beautiful book. (Oh, yes, A5 because I cheat on the Morning Pages prescription!)
Then there is all the writing I do outdoors - that needs something smaller - pocket sized. Something I won't mind getting soggy. I scribble in these on beaches, in woods, in the reed beds, bird hides, on trains, at bus-stops,. I write in them when the sun is burning my neck, or frost is freezing my fingers, or the ink is bleeding in the rain. They are cheap. They get culled.
I keep my journals. My field books are mined and then discarded.
Me too Lesley, my morning pages are in an A5 journal too. I have no idea what I'd write if I thought I had to fill three A4 pages. I love that wonderful phrase you created that "Journaling is sanity-savingly, live-changingly important", it says it all, simply.
The perfect writing day is always a problem one. It starts around three a.m. One or another of her characters can’t sleep so it’s time to throw grit in Denarii’s eyes, pull her hair, jump up and down on the pillows and shout into her ear, “Hey you. Get up!”
“Go away,” she replies, “and come back at a more civilised time… Say, after six.”
“Oh, so you don’t want this amazing phrase, this line you spent all day yesterday chasing, then?”
The threat of forgetting such a perfect piece of prose is just too much. So, on goes the light and she picks up her pen, takes down the dictation verbatim then tries to sleep again.
Half past five: she gives up. It’s getting too noisy in there; the rest of the dramatis personae have now got involved.
So, up and into the living room; a pot of coffee per two hundred processed words. In just a few hours she’ll tell the world a tale. So long as it leaves her undisturbed.
The strange thing is, the one line she will discard is the very darling that woke her. The words will be wrong, too flowery, too much the product of a half dreaming mind.
Oh, well!
Love this, Denarii. The sense of achievement and disappointment enveloped in a single emotion. Like a mother waving children off into the world; job done.
Then they come back...
My darlings and I have reached an accommodation: so long as I acknowledge them, repeat them a couple of times, they quieten....and they have to come back at that more civilised hour if they want to be heard. The deal is: if they do, I promise to write them down and find a home for them.
Those darlings are the ones that always leave me flummoxed too Denarii. And like you, they are always the ones that are deleted in the first set of edits. As you so rightly sigh, oh well!