Yesterday, I bought 2 Cattleya notebooks. In the past, I used to buy pretty and expensive notebooks, those kinds that can be bought in higher class bookstores and stationery shops. There was even a time when I lusted over a moleskin notebook, just because most writers like Butch Dalisay share that they have a moleskin notebook to scribble sudden waves of inspired ideas in. The problem is, I never could write on them. I just felt my handwriting is too terrible (ugly) and undeserving to appear on their smooth pages. It would be like graffiti on the Taj Mahal walls. I’d be more stressed out about how my writing would look on my pretty notebooks’ pages than what I am writing, then I’d be guilty about amassing such pretty useless notebooks, stashed somewhere in the black hole I call my closet.
So to put an end to this anguished cycle, I bought 2 simple 100-page spiral notebooks with plastic covers, the kind I used to buy when I was in college. One would use one as my idea notebook, a scratch notebook if you will. It is where I will jot down my ideas, fashion them into an outline which will hopefully end up as my first draft. The second notebook is my journal…again. Yes, I will try to write daily. My other pretty notebook which I assigned this honorable assignment, to document my daily thoughts and activities, didn’t quite serve its purpose as I thought. It was compact and portable, so I can stash it in my bag and write anytime inspiration strikes, but it has proven too small for comfort. My hand aches when I write on it.
That is why yesterday, I decided to drop all pretenses and bought two Cattleya notebooks, so I can send a message to myself and out to the world: this time I am serious. I’m not in it for the frills or the trivial joys of it, I know I have a long way to go, having started late in the game, but I am serious. I will write.
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