JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Mat with notebook, originally uploaded by Koosama.

from My Life in Accessories, monthly in Metro

It seems disrespectful, calling my notebook an accessory. Better to call it “medium” or “materials” or even “means of livelihood”. My notebook is my memory, downloaded and preserved in hard copy. I could leave the house without, say, a watch or a pair or earrings. My wrist or earlobes would feel naked, but I’d manage to get through the day. If I left the house without my notebook I would be incapacitated. I wouldn’t be able to think, for fear that something earth-shattering would occur to me, and I would have nothing to record it in. And since this earth-shattering idea would not be written down, it would vanish for all eternity, and I would spend the rest of my life trying to recover that lost idea. (“The proof of the Riemann hypothesis came to me in a flash. . .but I forgot it!”) The fact that no idea of galactic import has actually occurred to me when I have my notebook in hand only proves that the idea will pop into my head when I am without my notebook.

Then why don’t you write it down on the back of a receipt or a table napkin or whatever blank surface is available, you point out, thoughtfully adding, you neurotic geek? Because, unsympathetic reader, the proof of Riemann’s hypothesis would not fit on the back of a receipt. Plus it would be an affront to the scintillating idea/ mathematical proof to be recorded on a roll of paper spewed by a cash register. No, you need a medium worthy of your ideas, and the proper medium is a notebook.

I have a very smart friend who is constantly scribbling observations on bits of paper, which he then crams into his pockets. Over the years I have presented him with pocket notebooks to encourage easy filing of his wisdom. He insists on writing on bits of paper, which is probably why he hasn’t gotten round to producing a book-length manuscript. His insights are scattered across countless bits of paper, probably tossed into a drawer which will inevitably be emptied in a fit of house-cleaning.

The one thing that is never discussed in writing workshops is the actual writing–the dragging of pen across paper. I think the true romance of writing lies not in the suffering that’s supposed to inspire it or the drinking and debauchery that’s supposed to fuel it, but in the physical act of forming words with ink. The blank sheet stares at you, mocking your fear and dread. The emptiness weighs on your soul like an anvil. You take up your pen and defile that blankness. You say no to oblivion. Many prefer the convenience of a keyboard and monitor, but I like to feel the words in my hand, on the dent where my thumbnail bites into my index finger. The notebook is an extension of my hand; I am what I write.