An ode to thinking on paper

"If I look back over the years I have documented my life on paper I see a map of me - a chartering of uncertain voyage, crystallising tentative footsteps slowly over time."

“…to open up to the blank page and interact with it, takes energy and sometimes a little courage. But the rewards may surprise.” - Roland Allen

A spread from one of my pocket notebooks.

Hello fellow human,

For Christmas, one of my dear friends gifted me ‘The Notebook’ by Roland Allen - a 380-page tome detailing ‘the history of thinking on paper’.

“For all the complicated systems of use that the notebook has inspired - bookkeeping, life drawing, common-placing and more - few users have ever stepped back and conceived of it as a tool, wondered how it actually works, or thought about how it may be made to work better.”

Thanks to intense hyperfocus (that I hope does not disappear any time soon) I am one of those ‘few users’. I spend a lot of time reflecting on my notebook system, tinkering with it, and scouring books and blogs for insights into other people’s set-up. I enjoy nothing more than buying a new notebook - the woody smell of unused paper, and the possibility a blank page presents. But I also meander through existing notebooks, finding joy in their changing use and inspiration. There are no rules, only endless curiosity about where they may take me.

It was not always this way. I had to decide, through practice, that my notebooks would be a place of sanctuary not sin. The idea that my notebooks need to be consistent or perfect is one I chose to let go of, but an insistence on neatness continues to haunt me. I struggle to let go of the desire for order, at the same time feeling drawn to letting chaotic scrawls erupt from my pen nib. Will I, over time, lean into a messy page? Or is my desire for order and linearity an integral part of me?

This is what I love most about notebooks - they are unique to the individual owner. There is no one right way to use a notebook, and there are no rules to adhere to (other than the ones you choose to impose yourself).

“…organised thinkers like Woolf and Highsmith transitioned neatly from notebook to notebook depending on what was on their mind… [whereas] Agatha Christie used cheap school exercise books… she never managed to organise her notebook’s contents… so the notes for any given novel might be scattered wildly between that many notebooks… the notebooks are also filled with domestic distractions: her daughter’s homework, scores from rounds of bridge, shopping lists, travel plans, things-to-do, sketches for dust jackets, and notes of phone calls with her publishers.”

For this reason I think of my notebooks as a life-long practice. My method of use will surely change over time, reflecting changes in me - including how closely I manage to express myself on the page over subconsciously mirroring others. If I don’t expect myself to stay the same, how can I expect an extension of myself, a physical representation of myself, to stay constant? If I look back over the years I have documented my life on paper I see a map of me - a chartering of uncertain voyage, crystallising tentative footsteps slowly over time.

---

I often refer to my notebooks as my second brain. They are me in paper form; a direct reflection of what is in my consciousness at that point in time. But they are also my second heart and my second soul. Or maybe they are simply a part of my heart and my soul? From documenting a doctor’s appointment to scrawling my biggest dreams, the pages of my notebook hold my inner world outside of me.

It turns out, as I discovered whilst reading ‘The Notebook’, this has already been given a name: ‘The Extended Mind’. This idea explores the power of thinking outside of the brain; how we use physical resources in our physical environment to help our cognitive function. In general it concerns objects that store information, such as a notebook. To explore this, the authors of this idea, Clark and Chalmers, hypothesised a New Yorker named Otto:

“Otto suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, and like many Alzheimer’s patients, he relies on information in the environment to help structure his life. Otto carries a notebook around with him everywhere he goes. When he learns new information, he writes it down. When he needs some old information, he looks it up. For Otto, his notebook plays the role usually played by a biological memory.”

Whilst I am not currently afflicted by the misfortune of Alzheimers, I do struggle with working memory, and I use my notebooks in much the same way as Otto does. They tether my past, my present, and my future, so much so that they have become a part of my identity and my self. As Roland Allen puts it:

“…it helps to explain the strange strength of the bonds that we form with our notebooks and diaries if we understand them to be extensions of our minds, parts of our belief and cognitive systems that happen to reside outside our skulls but are otherwise integral to the business of thinking and living. In reading my diary, you read my mind, and in my hypothetical dash to the diary boxes through the smoke, I’m not protecting my property, but rescuing a part of my self.”

My notebooks are, in fact, not only a place for documenting my identity and my self but a tool for discovery of these things. Whilst I have always kept some form of notebook, I only religiously started doing so three years ago when I consciously decided to embark on a journey of self (re)discovery. At that time in my life, if someone had asked me to describe who I am - what makes me, me - I would have been at a complete loss. I didn’t know what I liked doing outside of work, what my values were, how I liked to socialise, what I felt passionate about, or where I felt safe and comfortable. I was an untethered soul waiting for someone to give me the answers, unaware that no-one was coming.

“I don’t know what I think until I write it down.” - Joan Didion

My first notebook on my self-discovery journey was more of a sketchbook. I was less-so focused on my self and more-so focused on what I could create. I used my sketchbook as an “idea garden” - a dedicated place to sow seeds, and watch some of them bloom. I started with watercolour, tried gouache, landed on drawing, expanded into podcasting about my journey, and eventually started to write about the many realisations concerning my self this creative journey was sparking.

What started as a creative hobby morphed into a journey into my insecurities, my patterns, and my trauma. I began to excavate the things that had gone unsaid, or even unnoticed by me, that had driven my behaviour, my thinking, and my choices. I was turning them over in the palm of my hand, and welcoming them with curiosity onto the page of my sketchbook.

So I started a separate notebook for my thoughts and experiences. A place to write, at the start of every day, in response to questions I posed myself. Little did I know I had happened upon a therapeutic writing technique first researched by Dr James Pennebaker in 1986 - a method called expressive writing, which consists of putting feelings and thoughts into written words in order to cope with traumatic events or situations that yield distress.

“The most healing writing, according to researchers, must follow a set of creative parameters. And most importantly, it can be just for you. It must contain concrete, authentic, explicit detail. The writer must link feelings to events — on the page… In short, when we write to express and make sense, we reclaim some measure of agency.”

I do not believe this practice can be a magic bullet - even if every person practiced expressive writing ‘perfectly’, the desperate need for accessible therapies, medication, and government and community assistance for all would surely remain. But it is noteworthy that since Pennebaker’s first study “over 200 research studies have reported that “emotional writing” can improve people’s physical and emotional health” and, on a personal level, I thank expressive writing for propelling my healing journey.

“If your business is words, a notebook can be at once your medium - and your mirror.” - Roland Allen

I have become, I would say, deeply sentimental about my notebooks. And, although they play a huge role in my personal life, I think part of this sentimentality is because the act of thinking on paper also connects me to other people. Not only to people who are currently alive, but people who have long passed, and people who have yet to arrive. It’s a strange thought (because I can’t think of anything worse than someone reading my notebooks) but they will, once I am no longer here, most likely be read by people in a world that doesn’t exist yet.

When notebooks were first kept in the home in Florence in the thirteenth century, growing in popularity over the course of the fourteenth century, and peaking in the fifteenth as the Renaissance bloomed, I wonder if people predicted that by the 21st century we would have easy access to notebooks of varying sizes, colours, and shapes for all sorts of uses? Or, that the technological revolution would digitise the notebook? I doubt it, and in the same way, I doubt I can predict how the use of the notebook will continue to shape-shift into the future.

What will the impact of technology be on this rich history of thinking on paper? How is the documentation of our lives and history changing now we document our existence with digital footprints instead of ink? I don’t know, but I am certain that I am not done with thinking on paper. In fact, I’m quite sure I’ve only just begun.

“…to the early adopters [of notebooks], those blank pages represented unconstrained horizons. They had no finer cognitive technology. It challenges us to create, to explore, to record, to analyse, to think. It lets us draw, compose, organise and remember… With it, we can come to know ourselves better, appreciate the good, put the bad in perspective, and live fuller lives. In that context, it’s hardly surprising that more and more of us turn to the paper notebook even as digital gadgets become cheaper, slicker and richer with features…” - Roland Allen

Sending you love,

Charlie

P.s. On Saturday mornings I sit in my favourite coffee shop until my bum goes numb reading newsletters I collected from the week. Here are the newsletters I most enjoyed last week:

• On Belonging by

  Julia Marina

• The three-or-four-hours rule by Oliver Burkeman

• “How do I keep going?” by

  Lisa Olivera

• Martin Luther King Jr.’s Orgnizational Systems by

  Jillian Hess

• The complexity of survival by

  Nic Antoinette

• More ideas from the garden by

  Austin Kleon

• Too Many Layers by

  Tara McMullin

• Nobody Asked But Welcome To a Day In My Life by

  Rick Morton

• Managing Reactions by

  Yung Pueblo

• In Haste
  - a podcast newsletter for writers hosted by
  Alice Vincent
  and
  Charlotte Runcie
  (discovered via
  Emma Gannon
  )

P.p.s. Thank you to paid subscribers, including Lisa and Molly who generously shared the below about why they decided to become patrons of this newsletter. Your financial support allows me to keep writing and creating. Thank you.

If you enjoyed this letter and wish to support my work you can:

• become a free or paid subscriber

• leave a heart and comment on this post on Substack

• share this letter with a friend, or restack it on Substack

• refer a friend to Rewild and get:

  • 1 month comp for 3 referrals

  • 3 month comp for 5 referrals

  • 6 month comp for 25 referrals

You might also like: