Notebooks

There’s something about a blank page.

Even though I do most of my writing on my computer these days, I still get kind of silly about a fresh notebook. I just love the crisp, naked pages.

I carry a notebook with me at all times.

I’m picky about notebooks, too. (There’s a shocker)

I like spiral, preferably with a hard board cover with at least one pocket for loose pages. I like them thin and about 5x8. And it’s gotta be lined. Lined is key. My good friend Dave prefers unlined notebooks because he likes to do sketches of some of the more bizarre characters and environments he creates.

But I like lines. (This is true of the other sort of line, too. Who doesn’t love a good single-file line???)

I like the order and rationality of 30 perfectly ordered and parallel lines, just waiting to be filled up with my thoughts.

The pen is important, too. There’s nothing I hate more than a cheap Bic ball-point pen. Ugh. My pen of choice is the Pentel micro (0.5mm) in blue. About once a year or so I buy a whole box of them. My mother used to “commandeer” them from her office, but now that she’s retired, I have to feed my pen habit myself.

But, like I said, mostly I write on my laptop: the Cricket. A Dell 12 inch Inspiron 700m (only 4 pounds even with the extended battery so I pretty much have it with me wherever I go) which is slowly falling apart. The external speakers stopped working a month after the warrantee ended (Hahaha!) and it’s starting to do some squirrelly things.

So I’ve been backing up EVERYTHING in my fiction folder and crossing my fingers that the Cricket survives until my next income tax refund comes around in February….