Uninspired Writing

My new Sakura Notebook. It makes me happy.

I started a new notebook today. It’s a gorgeous Moleskine I got in Milan, the Sakura edition. As you would expect from Moleskine, the paper quality is outstanding, and the attention to detail is quite something (there are two ribbon markers, each a different shade of pink to match the design). There’s even a little bookmark with sales copy about “The Art of Capturing Fleeting Beauty”. It says: “…Pen and paper are the best way to capture inspiration and imprint it in the memory, making permanent what by nature is impermanent.”

This got me thinking about when I started writing. For a few years, I had collected beautiful notebooks and was too scared to sully them with my uninspired thoughts. I waited for inspiration, and it visited rarely. Then, I read Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. She says the morning pages are non-negotiable. Start now. So I grabbed the notebook I’d least mind ruining: a free swag Guy had brought from a tech conference. It was the colour of a miserable day in London and had the logo of whatever tech company. I started writing.

The morning pages aren’t inspired. The work of writing is mundane and sometimes outright dull. My morning pages consist mostly of what I need to do today and things that irked me yesterday. And every once in a while, an inspired turn of phrase or observation. Those I pull out and use in my public writing.

Our society romanticises writing, making it precious. Beautiful notebooks are useless if I don’t write in them. I’ve now used all of my empty, beautiful notebooks. And even though I know that a notebook is to be written in, it’s difficult to loosen the myth’s grip. A beautiful notebook still gives me a twinge of guilt before I start writing my to-do list in it.