Four tips to start using your notebooks
You may think that a calligrapher and bookbinder would confidently pick up a fountain pen and set off writing on the first page of a new notebook… but you’d be wrong. I’ve always had piles of notebooks stacked away unused because I feel they’re too beautiful to write in.
If this sounds familiar, I have a few tricks to actually start using and enjoying them:
1. Treat yourself to better stationery for more mundane uses
Get into the habit of using good quality notebooks for everything. It will improve your everyday and make it far more likely you’ll use those special items too. Once you get used to scribbling a shopping note on a beautiful notepad with your favourite pen, confidently reaching for the soft, creamy pages of that special journal will be a few steps closer.
2. Start with the oldest notebook in the pile
If you love stationery, you are likely to have a few notebooks stored away, waiting for that perfect moment, for the right contents. As you contemplate your latest papery acquisition and feel it is too beautiful to start using just yet, pick up a notebook from the bottom of your pile instead. It will look a lot less intimidating. Don’t overthink it: it is its time, now, whatever you were planning to write.
3. Never write on the first page
There is absolutely no need to write on that first page, where stage fright is likely to be at its most crippling. The third page will look far friendlier a prospect. The first page doesn’t have to remain blank forever: you can come back to it later, and add a title or even a table of contents, once your notebook feels more like a friendly old companion than an intimidating first date.
4. Write in pencil
If you have a favourite fountain pen, of the kind whose nib has bent to your gestures and fits your hand and your writing perfectly, this may not apply. But if ink feels a little too permanent, pick up a pencil instead. I rarely use anything else unless I have to (Blackwing pencils are the best, and the natural is my favourite), and it is liberating: not just erasable, but generally more forgiving of a rushed or hesitant hand.
Some notebooks may really be too special, and best left on a shelf, to be lovingly gazed at until, maybe, the right time comes. But the rest deserve to be used, and become home to our stories, be they made up of shopping lists or poetry.
And if you need a new notebook, I have one for every use:
A6 cloth-spine lined notebooks for a practical, carry everywhere option
A5 back-to-back dotted notebooks to plan, plot and take notes
French link stitch notebooks (A5 or A6) for journals, sketchbooks, notes or projects
rustic journals for herbariums, sketches or collecting quotes or intentions
