Get a Notebook.

I met with the author Sonia Pilcer the other day. She is going to mentor me through the process of writing my grandmother’s story. “Get a notebook,” was her first advice. I pointed to the one I had brought with me.

As someone who was a successful student, I have only good memories associated with the first page of a new notebook. It meant the start a new class or school year – an adventure. A plain black and white composition book or an elegant leather-covered journal; I love notebooks.

I write regularly in two notebooks. The first is the one in which I write my daily Haikus. I write them in a notebook because I like looking back at how the poem emerged. Sometimes an image I crossed out in one poem is perfect for another. A notebook also feels more like a journal and keeping an account of my year was one of the reasons I started writing a Haiku every day. However, mostly because I cannot read my own handwriting, and because notebooks sometimes get in the way of a spilled cup of coffee, I frequently store the Haikus in a file in the cloud.

The second notebook is for writing about my grandmother. I have been using it for random ideas, phrases, and paragraphs as they come to me. I drafted an outline of the book in the notebook. I also have notes from my reading about life in Russia, the journey across Europe and on the ship to New York, and Jewish life on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the early 20th. century. The notebook is extremely portable. So is my phone, which I use for notes all the time, but they are shorter and more practical in nature. The notebook feels right for this creative endeavor.

Sonia claims that the computer stifles creativity, but I don’t think that’s true. As soon as I began to write my first 1000-word scene, I found myself at my desk, on the computer where I do all my other writing. I can’t explain why. It may be because I feel more ready to “work” at my desk and writing an entire scene feels like work. Sitting at my desk is a psychological cue. I must stay there until I have something I feel good about – even if I know it may need to be completely rewritten or even discarded. This week I will try writing a scene in my notebook. But I have a feeling I will move back and forth between a pencil and software until the project is done.