I’ve switched notebooks. As a novelist, the one luxury I allow myself is choosing a notebook with the right color and style for my next work. This notebook will be filled with dreams, travels, interviews, research, and experiences. I don’t know when I’ll write the first sentence of my novel, but I must be bolder, more delicate, slower—more hesitant. A notebook holds the traces of hesitation. A novelist is someone who moves forward with their own sentences, even if just an inch.

You can often gauge a student’s academic attitude by looking at their notebook. The more filled it is, the better their grades. Similarly, a writer’s notebook is packed with extensive reading, momentary thoughts, and fragments of overlooked experiences. These fill the pages and eventually transform into poems and novels. A single word written in the notebook becomes the lead for the first sentence, the foreshadowing, the conclusion, and the story’s plot.

notebook, writer, transformation