written and posted by members of Lancashire Dead Good Poets' Society

Wednesday 25 June 2014

Unintentional spaces

17:16:00 Posted by Lindsay , , , , 2 comments
I have lots of spaces. In my notebooks. I buy them, start them and then when I have sullied the first few pages with my scrawls I start a new one. I always have plenty of new ones because I buy so many. I tend not to buy expensive ones, I've done that before and they stay completely empty. I am not one of those people I envy who can calculate what they need to say and then scribe it on to their sheets of paper in perfect handwriting. My handwriting looks like it's been done by two different people, with their feet. I constantly self edit too, so my scratchings are then scribbled out, with lots of little arrows and random word choices to insert teetering above others. I then start the whole paragraph again underneath and try to make it look neat but do the same again.I envy neat people who have lovely notebooks.

 I do like to write on my laptop as this makes it look presentable as I can just delete things. I find I get into a state of flow better with a notebook though,  while I'm pottering about or watching the arguing couples and awkward first dates in Costa. As I have mentioned in previous posts I don't have the longest of attention spans anyway so when I see a new notebook I convince myself that it simply isn't necessary to fill up the others. I justify this by only buying cheap notebooks anyway, so I'm drowning in books full of spaces. But it's ok. This means when I need to write something down quickly I dig up something I wrote two years ago and think to myself, "Did I write that?" it's quite a nice feeling really. I always know it was me that wrote it, there's no way anyone else is that messy. I want neat writing in lovely notebooks, but it's never going to happen.  The disappointment in my own penmanship means there will always be spaces.



Notebooks that I found on my desk space. I didn't dare get the others.

2 comments:

Damp incendiary device said...

Is there a group you can join? It's a pretty useful addiction, as they go.

And who says they need to be filled anyway? Pen manufacturers!

I echo the feeling of reading old words and being chuffed that they're not totally awful. If you have any of those ideas you're not using, please feel free to share :-)

Adele said...

I use my notebooks until they are full to bustin'. Different folks - different strokes!