Piles of Paper

I sit at this desk I have had since I was a teenager. I've jerry-rigged it for use as a computer desk by pulling out the main drawer and balancing the keyboard it, and setting the mouse on a manuscript book which is then atop an opened side drawer.

I'll never forget the day I panicked, thinking I had misplaced that manuscript book. I had forgotten that it was the foundation for my mouse pad.  

The desk is cluttered. It would take an evening to catalogue all the stuff collected here, and to tell the tale of why I keep it all.

Atop one pile at the right-hand corner is a "Christian Pocket Diary" for 2005 and a Moleskine mini-journal. The latter is empty, the former is mostly empty.  

There are islands of spiral-bound notebooks scattered through-out the room, some filled. Most not.  

What an amazing pile of paper.  

I do have one full “thesis” book, begun in my first year of college (1976-77). It really is a “common-place book”, as it has quotes and poems from a number of quarters, along with original writing and journal entries. For example, somewhere in the middle is a page of quotes ending with one from Elizabeth Hardwick (as memory serves): “Oh, yes!” Elsewhere is one of my darker short stories, titled “The Funeral”.  

In many ways, that thesis book was a precursor of this space, where I try out drafts of poems and vignettes. On dry days, I simply copy from my Zen Calendar or a quote “borrowed” from Word a Day.  

I have another “thesis” book which has 101 out of 124 pages filled. Almost a third of this book collects essays written for a church newsletter in the mid to late 80s.

This may seem excessive, or wasteful. Am I collecting notebooks (etc) as some collect coins or baseball cards?

Many of the spiral notebooks were remainders or strays obtained when I worked at the Infernal Bookstore ages ago. No out-of-pocket expense there. Other notebooks and blank books have been bought on a whim, or because I liked the cover.

Sometime back I read that one way to break writer's block was to buy yourself a new tool to honor the craft – primarily a writing instrument or something to write on. The Moleskine mini-journals (three 30-page journals to a pack for $6) were bought for that reason. I even thought, at the time, that I might use all three at once – for separate concerns/obsessions.

I bought my first Moleskine Journal after reading the Real Live Preacher's entry about his. There may have been a bit of magical thinking present here: in other words, the misty-eyed belief that buying the same tool that he uses would help me write as well as he does.

There's a certain satisfaction to typing my thoughts as I go along, rather than going from pen to page, from notebook to screen. More recent poems have been written this way than I care to admit. I'll confess that many poems that I think work the best started on the page. But some, even a long poem like “Grandmother's House”, have started on the screen and drafts get worked out on-screen as well. The recently published "Year of the Flood" was also written on-screen.

Don't know what marks that difference. No doubt would make an interesting neurological study. I would suppose there is a study, by now, which compares what parts of the brain are active when writing with pen in hand against what parts are used when composing at the keyboard.

The best I know to do is to “follow the muse”. Occasionally, I just feel a need to feel my fingers grip the pen. My experience with the Moleskine has taught me the pleasure of writing on high-quality paper, which adds a unique aesthetic to the process. Sometimes I even like the tactile sensation of spreading graphite on the page when I write with a pencil. Sometimes I like the feel of the keys and the subtle click-clack sound they make.

I've learned to trust my instincts in these matters.

How'm I doing so far?