And speaking of planning ...

I have started to gather up composition notebooks of all different kinds. (I have one from Powell's that's called a "Decomposition Book" because it's from recycled materials. hahaha!) One notebook is for ideas. One is for notes from all day, all the time, different places, heaps of writing fodder. One is for keeping random ideas written down for later. One is for the ongoing religious education curriculum I'm writing. One is even for keeping track of all the other notebooks!

And no, I'm not doing it electronically. Here's why.

Accessibility: electricity quits sometimes, computers crash, hard drives or software or mother boards or processors or whatever else is in one of these things stops working, and I never ever know why - nor do I have any desire to add computer programming, maintenance, or repair to my list of things to pay attention to.

Tactile: if I don't use my body to interact with my art (my writing and my projects), I lose my connection to it.

Lined, and sewn: Little Miss Magical World from the previous post is married to Mr. You're A Writer Act Like One ... and I work with him at the library sometimes, and he's the one that told me these this. If you keep your notes on unlined paper, you won't want to look at them in the future because it's too hard to read stuff not lined up properly. And if you used notebooks with staples or glue, over time (especially here in the rain forest) you'll have rust or disintegration. So ... lined, and sewn.

Cheap: turns out that writing things into a book that is too expensive or precious stops me from just writing. Notebooks are for notes, not for posterity. That makes it easier to fill them.

Matching bindings: I know - silly, right? But if all the notebooks have a cloth tape spine, and they're all about the same size, then they can line up on my desk, or stack nice and neat, and I can write with a white pen (which I need to find - so far, I haven't seen one I could use) to identify them, and they're handy and useful and neat and attractive and inviting.

I really need a good white pen.