EMPTY NOTEBOOKS: AN ADDICTION
Writing and Imperfection
A Notebook Addiction
I have a problem. It’s time to confess my addiction: I have too many empty notebooks. I mean way too many. There is nothing written in them. Nothing, I have a collection ranging from large A4 sized journals to tiny pockets notebooks of a size where two of them would neatly fit in my shirt pocket. My notebooks are jammed in bookshelves on top of my books. More live in a pile overflowing from the bookshelf onto the floor.
A new journal or notebook offers hope that something good will be written in it. Another addiction of mine involves pens and pencils. (More posts on that will appear here soon). When I see a new notebook in a shop, I tell myself that if I purchase it, I will write all sorts of things that just would not look right appearing in anything other than this one. And so I buy another one that ultimately sits on my shelf— empty.
By now, you may have diagnosed my addiction. It must come down to procrastination. Well, yes and no. If procrastination is ultimately about the fear of failure, then you probably have hit the mark. An empty journal offers endless possibilities of success. It offers a dream world — yet unexplored— in which all of one’s aspirations and hopes reside. The moment you write in a journal that beauty is marred, even destroyed. That is the step, however, that one must take. In my experience, you have to despoil the journal so that it becomes useful. Scratch outs—cross-outs—erasures have to happen in it. And, then there is my completely illegible handwriting. You see, I think faster than I can write so when I try to keep up with my thoughts I write so fast that I often find that I can't read my own handwriting. In other words, it’s more than just procrastination.
Writing and Imperfection
When I first write in a new journal, I am tempted to think to myself that what I write will be great. After all, my imagination has conjured the vision of a great work. Then after a bit of scrawling, I look at what I have written, and as so many other writers have witnessed, I realize that what i have written is terrible. It is not just terrible it is of no redeeming value at all. It simply will not do. It must be rewritten. And so, to write I must go back, over and over to the starting place to find the way forward— the way though the weeds that seem to be choking the great ideas that were supposed to have appeared on the page in the first place. But one I have marked up a journal, it is not as beautiful as it was when it was empty. The aura is gone.
Even though my handwriting is often illegible and my early drafts are mediocre at best, I am learning that I need to embrace these imperfections as part of my creative process. It’s okay to start small, make mistakes, and be imperfect from the beginning. I have to be patient and kind to myself as I embark on writing—however big or small that task might be.
Resolve
What am I going to do now? I'm planning on grabbing a handful of my empty journals and writing something in them. Something. That way, there will be space for more to appear. The writing in them could then be likened as an imperfect seeding with a chance of becoming a pearl. It’s a chance, but not a certainty. The beauty of writing, after all, lies not in perfection, but in the journey itself – with all its twists, turns, and imperfections..
The next time you pick up a pen or pencil to write, remember that imperfection is not only okay – it's often the most beautiful part of the process.
All of the pictures shown in this post were taken at Goods for the Study, 234 Mulberry Street in Soho, NYC. It was the first place I went when I arrived in New York City yesterday. I did not however, not buy another notebook. But then again, there is always today or tomorrow. .
