Notebooks and Skeletons: Where the Novel Takes Shape

I am a huge fan of illustrator and graphic design artist Mica Angela Hendricks who has a terrific blog The Busy Mockingbird where she shares not only her work, but also the lovely collaborations she does with her very young daughter (a recent post of their team work went viral not too long ago). She has a new post up now about her sketchbooks and the ritual she has of creating a pleasing cover first as a way of inspiring her to embrace the sketchbook and work. It's a quirky and very funny piece (with lots of gorgeous and spontaneous art from her sketchbooks). However, if the cover isn't right -- she can't keep the sketchbook because the failed cover seems to intimidate her, suggest her work might not be worthwhile after all.

As a writer, I don't have anything as beautiful as a sketchbook of lovely doodles and designs promising much grander moments in the future. I have only spiral college notebooks filled with research notes, the occasional outburst of plot ideas, maybe a badly done drawing, library call numbers, book titles I probably will never get to but like the comfort of having "just in case," sometimes character studies, lists of vocabulary words, and even the entire list of chapters with a one line description to remind me of where I have been, where I am at the moment, and when I am done, the architecture of the whole novel. (Below is an early version of the whole outline of The Innamorati -- looks like I am still rearranging things!)

I have terrible handwriting--big loopy letters, "n"s and "r"s look alike, "u"s and "m"s could easily swap places. I write like my French grandmother, maybe because as a child the most handwritten letters I received came from her and I must have decided that I wanted to create text like that too. As I grew older it turned out I was the only one in the family who could decipher my grandmother's handwriting and was called upon to read all the Christmas or birthday cards (always loaded with a check) she would send to each one of us.

And while it seems pedestrian to use a plain university spiral bound notebook, I am not without my own "specs" when it comes to selection. Narrow ruled is a must. The spiral needs to be small and tight so as not to catch on things in my backpack and unwind. The paper needs to have a certain "crunch" to it. Some paper is so polished, the pen slithers around on it and my writing gets even more distorted than usual. Paper with a crunch is sort of porous, the pen tip bites the rougher surface and the ink settles in deeply. It feels and sounds wonderful to write on it. And yes -- the right pen! I love Pilots -- black and medium. The point is hard and narrow, but the ink flows smoothly into the paper. And it stays dark and legible, even after the paper has weathered. (And all my early notebooks are looking very ancient!).

Every novel I write begins with the right notebook and the right pen. Not to write the novel in, but to sketch its skeleton, its history, its vocabulary, the names, and threads between one idea and the next, one chapter and the next. I will head out this afternoon to select two new ones at the university bookstore, grab a box of new pens, and head to the library with a stack of call numbers. It's going to be a fun year of work.