It’s back-to-school time, which means nostalgia for covering books in contact and spending way too long in the notebook aisleAs a child of the 90s, my summers were spent splashing in the neighbours’ overly chlorinated pool and flicking through the back-to-school stationery catalogue. I circled the essential items, categorised my needs and wants, and cross-referenced them with the list the school had provided. I marked “stationery shopping” on my calendar – an annual highlight – and counted down the days.Despite the heat and humidity – the least conducive weather conditions for covering exercise books in sticky contact – my mother would take deep breaths and carefully coat each one in whatever print I’d chosen. She used a ruler to remove the bubbles while I dreaded the very real possibility that I’d have to live with ugly folds on my school books for a whole year. I’m the first-born daughter – that kind of imperfect would never do. Continue reading…It’s back-to-school time, which means nostalgia for covering books in contact and spending way too long in the notebook aisleAs a child of the 90s, my summers were spent splashing in the neighbours’ overly chlorinated pool and flicking through the back-to-school stationery catalogue. I circled the essential items, categorised my needs and wants, and cross-referenced them with the list the school had provided. I marked “stationery shopping” on my calendar – an annual highlight – and counted down the days.Despite the heat and humidity – the least conducive weather conditions for covering exercise books in sticky contact – my mother would take deep breaths and carefully coat each one in whatever print I’d chosen. She used a ruler to remove the bubbles while I dreaded the very real possibility that I’d have to live with ugly folds on my school books for a whole year. I’m the first-born daughter – that kind of imperfect would never do. Continue reading…
As a child of the 90s, my summers were spent splashing in the neighbours’ overly chlorinated pool and flicking through the back-to-school stationery catalogue. I circled the essential items, categorised my needs and wants, and cross-referenced them with the list the school had provided. I marked “stationery shopping” on my calendar – an annual highlight – and counted down the days.
Despite the heat and humidity – the least conducive weather conditions for covering exercise books in sticky contact – my mother would take deep breaths and carefully coat each one in whatever print I’d chosen. She used a ruler to remove the bubbles while I dreaded the very real possibility that I’d have to live with ugly folds on my school books for a whole year. I’m the first-born daughter – that kind of imperfect would never do.
Stationery has been central to my life; I was destined to develop a passion for marginalia and Nora Ephron movies. I’m now the mother of four school-age children and I am doing my best to instil in them a similar penchant for pens and post-its. Perhaps this is one way to steer them momentarily away from a screen-based life which will never compare to the joy of a bouquet of sharpened HB pencils and the potential of a paper page.
My desk – which sits in the corner of my lounge room in various states of chaos depending on deadlines – is the first place they come when they’re in need of a pencil. When my own sentences are stilted, I pick up my favourite pen – the uniball gel impact – and write by hand instead. Any notebook will do (I’ve tried them all) but there’s something particularly iconic about a simple spiral-bound spirax with its buttery yellow envelope sleeve at the front; a safe place for unruly notes that would otherwise scatter and hide in books and drawers.
Fancy journals have their place but they also demand a certain level of performance. And there is nothing that stifles creativity like expectation in the form of creamy paper and a fabric-covered journal resistant to scribble and coffee stains.
My writing notebooks are rarely legible and always haphazard. Sometimes I can’t even make sense of them. But then there are moments, deep in a manuscript, when I’m flicking through the messy pages looking for something to pique my interest and push me along, when I discover a single sentence that guides me through the overwhelm, and into whole new pages of work.
These bright ideas – fleeting thought bubbles – need to be documented in the moment, otherwise you lose them forever. It’s for this reason that having pen and paper on-hand at all times is completely and utterly necessary. All writers fear that they’ll lose the order and rhythm of words that come to them while they’re staring at droplets of water on the shower screen. This is the subconscious bubbling up; the aha moments; the solutions to plot problems and narrative woes. This process can’t be forced. You can’t grasp at these ideas, you just need to make space for them to arrive (even if they land when your hands are wet and you have to run to your notebook wrapped in a towel).
Paper doesn’t track your word count; handwriting slows down the brain and engages all the senses.
I use these facts to justify my passion for stationery and my persistent parental encouragement to write it all down! Pens and paper are the tools required to step away from a screen so you can document and diarise and, in doing so, make sense of things.
On a recent interstate trip we stopped at the Japanese lifestyle store Muji and as my children and I swarmed around the stationery section, I immediately reverted to a “yes” mum. “Go wild!” I said. Despite the fact that I’m usually frugal and I’d only bought carry-on luggage for our flight home, I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to revel in the largest variety of pens I’d ever seen – clicky, capped and coloured. There were pen cases and refills, grid paper and highlighters, paperclips and mechanical sharpeners (we bought one and our coloured pencils are now potential weapons).
Stationery shopping may be the finest form of procrastination for a writer but it’s also an essential part of a creative life. As I say to my kids: “Write your thoughts, embrace listicles, figure out the hard stuff. This is how you get to know yourself.”
A pen and a notebook can take you anywhere.
-
Jodi Wilson is the author of three books including Practising Simplicity and The Complete Guide to Postpartum: A Mother-focused Companion For Life After Birth, which is being published in July. She writes weekly on Substack