The First Notebook

The first notebook is one of those Mead composition books that continue to get made even though they aren’t really used all that much anymore. It is covered in little stickers that I got from a restaurant which depict Franklin the Green Knight and his friends. Franklin is a little turtle who dresses as a knight and who might even be a knight. I know nothing about him, really. I just had a bunch of stickers and no place to put them. Back when I started with these notebooks I would decorate them so the first four definitely have stickers. I’ve kind of outgrown drawing all over my notebooks. There is also some scotch tape in the upper right hand corner, a remnant from a time when I had written my name and class period down on there. I had to turn this notebook in. They were required for my first creative writing course, even though I started mine before the semester began and before I even knew that I was going to get an assignment like that. The dates are 12/16/00 to 2/1/01. The second notebook ended up getting turned in as well. I don’t think that my professor was expecting me to write so much.

The first notebook is interesting because I wanted to be very serious about writing but, at the same time, I seriously couldn’t finish a story. It was all just a bunch of starts. Usually, I used a prompt. I remember that I got this notebook because I had recently bought a book called The Writer’s Book of Days. It was full of weird advice and prompts and little things about writers and the writing life. They recommended getting a notebook to write in every day, so that’s what I did. I wrote in it every day. We even went on a family vacation to Las Vegas within ten days of me getting this notebook and I remember waiting until my sister had gone to sleep to sneak into the bathroom of the hotel room and write on the floor.

For all my dedication, the truth is that the writing in here isn’t that good. I was still trying to figure out what I was doing. I had just decided that I was actually going to pursue writing and I wanted to make sure that I was good at it. I needed a place to try things out.

I also don’t like that the pages are wide ruled. I would try to write to fill up the lines. It’s sloppy, childish really. I think that one of the biggest reasons that I eventually moved away from these composition books is that it is hard to find ones that aren’t wide ruled. I stopped liking them.

On 1/21/01 I made a little note in the margins of the page. It reads “Kid drowning in Baptismal pool?” I think that this was a story idea. I actually know that it must have been though there is no follow up. I didn’t write the story. I think the fact that I was thinking about something like this is indicative of the way that my mind was working at the time. I was in a really weird place. You’ll probably figure it out the further that we get into these notebooks.