Want to know the best way to find the writer in the room? Whip out a nice notebook or quirky pen and nine times out of ten, the writer will be right there wanting to know where you got that cute pen. There’s just something about stationary that gets our little writer hearts all excited. My family knows the dangers of taking me into our local office supplies store all too well. I could literally spend hours wandering around stroking all the notebooks, checking out the pens, and coveting the pads of Post-it notes, lost in my own little writerly heaven. Maybe you can relate?
However, when it comes to actually using these nice things, I have a much harder time. My cupboard is crammed with stacks of notebooks, some filled to overflowing, the pages inky and scribbled over, some currently in use, storing ideas and notes and overflowing with enthusiasm and creativity, and others still pristine, waiting for me to use them at some point in the future. I’m a big one for stocking up ahead of time. Got a back to school sale on notebooks and bulk packs of pens? I am all over that.
But the ones that I’ve written in are always those standard school notebooks. You know the ones. A4 sized, ruled with blue lines, and with those funny little label sections that always ask for your subject and year at school, which i could use for recording project names bu somehow never do. Somehow, I just can’t seem to bring myself to use my stash of beautiful notebooks, like that gorgeous Jane Austen themed one I was given last Christmas, fell in love with instantly and am saving for just the right time and the right subject. Which may never happen. But it would be a shame to wasteit on something trivial, right?
A lot of the reason why I don’t like to use these special books is because I’m afraid of making a mess in the pages. They are so pristine, so beautiful. There’s so much potential for awesomeness there. It needs to be filled with just the right writings. And it needs to be neat and pretty, both useful and pleasing to the eye, as well as being legible. None of which I am actually able to achieve when I’m scrawling in a notebook. My handwriting looks like an illiterate spider had a dance party over the page.
I’m afraid of messing up the potential perfection that I can see so clearly in my mind. I know my skills aren’t up to the task of executing what I imagine, and so I don’t even try. It’s the same reason why I’ve never done bullet journalling. I’ve seen those beautiful aesthetically pleasing bullet journals other writers are producing, and I love them whole idea of it. But I just know I can’t do that. Never mind that bullet journals are supposed to be functional, and the pretty part is an added bonus. If it isn’t going to be perfect and beautiful, then it isn’t going to happen.
I know a lot of writers are the same way as me about notebooks. We like to hoard them, but we never write in them. They’re overflowing with potential, but it’s so easy to wreck that perfect image that we just don’t want to even try. Perfectionism stops us from even starting. And it’s that same perfectionism that stops us from writing too. We have these shiny ideas, these perfect stories that we want to tell. But at the same time we know we can’t execute them exactly how we see them in our minds, and so we never even start.
But that’s not what notebooks and ideas are for. Notebooks, even the beautiful ones, aren’t made for perfection. They’re made to be filled with thoughts and ideas, notes and dreams. They’re made the be scrawled in and stained with ink. They’re made for those misspellings and those grammatically incorrect stream of consciousness rants. They’re made to be used and filled up with everything we want to record and keep and look back on later. Don’t be fooled by a pretty cover. These notebooks are here to work.
And those brilliant novel ideas are here to work too. Just because you can’t get the book to work perfectly in the first draft doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. It just means that you need to work hard to craft it. Good books are made through sweat and hard work, not through waiting for perfection to present itself. The idea is meant to be used, to be shared, to be turned into a story that others can enjoy. It wasn’t meant to be saved and saved for just the right moment when we know we can write it perfectly without a single fault. It needs us to go out there bravely and try anyway, to work at it until it’s right.
Perfectionism tells us to save these things until the right time, when we’re better, or when these are going to be right. It tells us that if it’s not going to be perfect, then we shouldn’t try at all. But that isn’t the truth. Notebooks are meant to be written in, ideas are meant to be used, and writers are meant to write, whether we have perfect handwriting, or our notebooks are filled with blots and scribbles, whether our first drafts are acts of genius, or our books have to be edited a hundred times to get the story right. Perfectionism tells us that unless we’re going to do it perfectly, it’s better not to risk it, not to start if it won’t be right first time. But perfectionism is wrong. We have to tell perfectionism to be quiet and then go and write anyway.
Do you hoard notebooks like me? Have you got a project you’ve held off writing because it needs to be ‘perfect’? Do you bullet journal, or are yours messy disasters like mine would be if I were brave enough to start? Let’s chat!
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