The Notebook of Theseus
Upon occasion, I am afflicted by every writer’s curse, namely that of Having a Good Idea in a Public Place.
This obviously causes a dilemma, especially when I’m actively doing something in said public place; working, wandering, socialising, etc. The temptation is to simply think ‘huh, that’s not bad – I’ll write it down when I get home.’ Sometimes that works, and the idea simply sits in the back of your mind until you reach a convenient computer. But more often than not, your award-winning screenplay concept or cure for world hunger will get overwritten by something that happens five minutes later, and you’ll get home with the nagging feeling that you thought of something really good, but you can’t quite remember what it was. Just like when you have a fantastic dream, then wake up to find that all the details have vanished before you could note them down.
I don’t like losing out on good ideas. These days, of course, we’re all carrying tiny computers around in our pockets which can hold an infinity of hastily typed notes. But it really wasn’t that long ago that this wasn’t the case. When I was first figuring out that I wanted to write, my phone was a brick that could barely run Snake. Sometimes the old ways are the best.
And thus, this: my constant companion for well over half my life, purchased on a whim at the Ludlow Medieval Fair and inhabiting my pocket ever since.
It’s tiny. The string keep sliding off the cover. The pencil is a 2B, because that’s all I had to hand that was short enough to fit inside when I first got it, which means that everything I write starts to smudge after a while, and for some reason I’ve never replaced it. It lives in my trouser pocket at all times, which forces me to do an awkward shuffle with phones, wallets and keys between jackets and bags and my one remaining front pocket.
I’ve used it for over 15 years, and I’m not about to stop now.
Most of it isn’t even the original notebook. I filled that up long ago, and then, because it’s a decidedly non-standard shape, had to find decent paper and cut strips to size to refill it myself. And then I filled those pagesup too, and replaced them again – this time with a new bit of string to replace the old, fraying one. The pencil is still somehow the same, as is the cover. That’s it. We’re rapidly approaching a Ship of Theseus scenario here.
And I’m not changing a thing. Because this notebook has, at one time or another, held most of the decent ideas I’ve ever had. If I’m struck by inspiration for a short story, I’ll scrawl it down in here. If I think of a new plot point, it goes here. If I’m out and about and start thinking too hard about novel outlines, I’ll plan out entire books in here. I jotted down the structure of my entire undergrad dissertation in here while at work as a kitchen porter. Scraps of poetry, random lines of dialogue, interesting town names – they all go in this little book, scrawled down before I have a chance to forget. It doesn’t matter where I am, this goes with me. (To my mother’s eternal annoyance whenever she sees me in a suit. If it ‘ruined the line’, why did they put pockets in the trousers at all, mother?)
The whole point, of course, is that the ideas I scrawl in this book usually vacate my head immediately afterwards. So every so often, I sit down at my desk and flip through the last few weeks of random notions. Most of them are, in fact, random notions: scraps of doggerel that will remain as such forevermore. But some of them are good. Some are really good. Some became the stories and books you might have read.
All in my pocket. Always in my pocket. Because no matter how much more convenient it would be to just use my phone, it’s not the same. If it’s a good enough idea for me to pull out that notebook, it’s worth writing down properly.
