The last notebook I posted about was finished last year, and this one as well, so I’ve been owing you this post for a while.

I bought this notebook at a museum where they had an exhibition with some Japanese art, and they even had one of the prints of this Hokusai masterpiece, “The Great Wave off the Coast of Kanagawa”. I visited the exhibition with one of my best friends some years ago, but just started writing on this notebook last year.

As I’ve mentioned before, this shouldn’t come as a surprise, since I usually prefer smaller notebooks I can take with me, but staying indoors due to the pandemic has allowed me to use bigger notebooks.

I really enjoyed using this hardback notebook by Tushita, so I can definitely recommend their products. Especially if you’re looking for a very solid notebook with blank pages.

But I’m sure you also want to know what I used it for, right?

Well, I’ve kept trying to focus on fewer projects, so I mainly filled it with notes for Academy, Feathers, Sanctuary, Fireflies, Oracle and research. But, in this case, a quarter of the notebook was filled with short scenes from all my projects for Taletober, a writing challenge that takes place in October. I’d participated in something similar (Escritober) a year earlier and enjoyed it, so I wanted to repeat the experience. This time was harder for me, but I might do it again this year if the prompts are good. I post these challenges on my Spanish Twitter account, so don’t worry if you’ve missed them. Because you haven’t!

Anyway, I hope you like this notebook and, believe it or not, I have another finished notebook waiting for its turn here. And I’ve already started a new one!

It’s been longer than a year since I last posted about my notebooks, and a few months since I finished this one, but at long last I had time to write about it.

I bought this notebook way back in 2016, when I visited London with a friend before Brexit would make it more difficult. I didn’t start it until Autumn 2020 because, as I’ve mentioned before, I used to be inclined to use smaller notebooks when I was away from home. Since the pandemic made me stay indoors, I decided to make the most of it and use the bigger notebooks instead.

I really enjoyed using this notebook by Paperchase. The pages have several illustrations as beautiful as the cover, so I was even more motivated to keep writing in order to see all the beautiful animals. And the plastic sleeve kept the notebook safe and clean while making it much lighter than a hardback.

In this notebook, I tried to focus on a few projects instead of sprinkling words all over the place, so I mainly filled it with notes for Academy, Sanctuary, Brothers, Oracle and research. In fact, a quarter of the notebook was just filled with notes I’d taken at an online conference for and by Spanish writers, which I count as research because they talked about structure, dialogue, fear, routines, revisions, action, characters, diversity, representation, psychology, historical fiction, sword-fighting, query letters, irreverent romance, smut, and magical realism. Yes, there were over 15 speakers and it lasted 10 hours, but it was amazing, I laughed and learnt a lot, and I would do it again.

If anyone is interested, the videos can be found in Spanish on YouTube, so just let me know which one you want and I’ll send you the link.

After my previous notebook, I started this one because it had been a present from a friend. I chose it before Quino passed away, so it unfortunately took a new and much deeper meaning while I was using it.
It was a pretty nice notebook, with a good size, blue and green pages signed by Mafalda, a document pocket with Mafalda’s face, and a couple of comic strips inside. By the way, the Spanish text in the cover means “And why don’t we start building a better world?”, which is why I thought it would be good to do some world-building next.

Don’t think lockdown has been that good for my writing inspiration. Holidays were, though. And I’ve also used this notebook for my research, which just involved reading and taking notes, so I’m still a turtle writer. Don’t worry.

Anyway, I wrote down several ideas and questions, mostly for the Academy and Sanctuary projects. I also wrote sample outlines and used them with these projects. However, I’m having some trouble with the Academy outline because I tried to merge two characters into one to fix something, and suddenly some other things didn’t make sense. Fortunately, I think I have realized what the problem is, but I ended up so frustrated I couldn’t continue working on Academy any more (and isn’t that the story of my life?), so I focused on Sanctuary then, and I’m still working on it.

I got this Kimmidoll notebook ages ago, when they were still slightly popular, and the pages are already yellowing. The notebook actually fits inside the grey cover, so it could be reused for another notebook, but I don’t have any other notebook that can fit inside.

Anyway, I filled this one with lots of notes because I’ve been doing some research, reading about writing Romance, the history of Madrid and mythology. I also found some notes about how to cope with lockdown, mental health and self-care.

Remember I said I’d decided to write and read what I enjoyed? Well, I was enjoying reading non-fiction, since I’ve always loved learning, and I’ve been writing some random scenes out of order, and it’s been good. I haven’t been writing the story I wanted to finish, but I have for the longest High Fantasy one I’ve been thinking about for years. I started wondering, again, whether I should have one, two or more POVs, so it will take much longer to write.

I’ve come to accept that this is how it works for me. It will take me a long time to finish anything, but if this is what I need to keep enjoying it, that’s what I’ll do. If it sounds like I’m trying to convince myself, it’s because I am, but I’ve realized that, after deciding I’m going to take my time and follow inspiration, I started writing more in my notebook. I finished it sooner than I expected and I’ve already started another one, so this new method might be working!

Yes, I write less often. Yes, I write only what I feel like and don’t try to focus on one project any more. But somehow, I’m also writing more than when I was trying to force myself to write daily for the same project. So maybe this is my method.

Maybe you think I could have posted this sooner given I finished the notebook so fast, and you’d be right. I had planned to post this back in July, but I’ve been too busy at work and didn’t have time to finish transcribing the notebook. I just can’t sit down and stare at a computer for so many hours. It’s not good for my mental health.

Anyway, now I’ve finished this, so I can celebrate and move forward!

If you were looking forward to seeing more posts about notebooks, you might have noticed it’s been a long time since my previous one. I was going to say this was due to me catching up with the present once I finished my eighth notebook, but then I realized it’s been 10 months.

Of course, I had several months of non-writing because… we can call it writer’s block because I don’t know if it was anxiety, burnout, depression… or all/none of the above. Plus, I don’t want to bore you with the details.

What I wanted to tell you is that this notebook was a present from one of my best friends, who has always supported my writing. The cover is smooth and water resistant, and there is a little secret:

I started it last September, and I did mention the notebook in my update back then. I thought I was going to finish soon, but life happens. I managed to meet my goal of reaching the middle of the notebook in October, but I didn’t even post an October update. I started writing again in March, so I’ve finished the other half of the notebook since then. It’s a welcome change.

Anyway, about what I wrote in it… Remember I said I wanted to focus on one or two of my unfinished stories and finish them? Well, I did remember, but I didn’t do it anyway. I started working on them, but then I had some interesting ideas for a different one, so I had to write those down. As a result, this notebook is again a representation of my inner chaos and I haven’t finished anything at all.

Still, I’m glad I’m writing and having ideas again, so I’m not really complaining. It’s hard to come up with words these days, so I feel fortunate for this tiny, flimsy light in the middle of the dark.

The Embellished Manuscript collection is back! This one has the music sheet of one of Chopin’s Polonaises on the cover. Beautiful, right? I’m in love with this notebook. Chopin means a lot to me because I’ve studied piano in the past. I’ve probably told you I touched a piece of music handwritten by Chopin once, right? It was in one of the Writing Workshops I attended as a teenager. A historian brought one from her private collection and I was shocked when she let me hold it in my hands. You may laugh, but in that moment I thought that no one had trusted me with something so important before. I still feel humbled and honoured whenever I think about it.

Ahem, well, let’s get to the most important part in a notebook: what’s inside.

Of course, there’s always a lot of ideas and worldbuilding for the long fantasy story, so no need to keep telling you that. What I find interesting is there’s always something I’d forgotten I’d written. In my previous notebook, the new stories I found weren’t worth your time, but in this one I saw a couple I haven’t dismissed completely yet.

One of them looked like fun, but I didn’t know where it was going. At first I thought it was related to a fantasy story I had, but I’m not sure now.

Then there was a long outline for a thing I restarted in a different notebook (my current notebook), so I haven’t transcribed that one yet. I feel a bit like cheating because it took a quarter of the notebook, but I’m not going to write an outline 4 times.

I also found some notes I took during one of my research trips and a couple of weird dreams I’d forgotten about, so it was quite fun.

This small notebook was a present from a friend who lives in Ireland.

As mentioned in my previous notebook post, it contains some drafts for my blog in Spanish. Since I had already posted those, transcribing the notebook didn’t take as long as it could have. I was aiming to finish by the end of June, but you can see I’ve finished much earlier.

In this notebook there were some unexpected snippets. For instance, I had no memory of writing an outline for a gay retelling of Pride & Prejudice. And I’m always doubting and second-guessing myself, but for the first time I’ve felt 100% sure about something: I don’t think it’s worth writing. The main conflict was Darcy not accepting his sexuality, and… nope, I don’t want to do that. But because one may be able to use parts and pieces of unusable writing for something else in the future, I’ve transcribed all of it.

I had also written down a couple of dreams I’d forgotten all about. It was interesting, because they came back to my mind as I was transcribing what I’d written down so long ago. Reminded me of a dream diary I used to keep when I was a teenage.

I also had some notes about my trip to England… which was ages ago, now I realize.

In any case, I had lots of scenes for stories I’ve already mentioned, and these three new stories that I’m not going to start with. I’m looking forward to the next notebook, which I used during 2017, because it must have some new ideas.

One of my small paperblanks from the embellished manuscripts collection. Among its pages I found maps, dead flowers, and lots of ideas for my long fantasy story (including some notes about linguistics).

A friend of mine helped me choose this notebook so I would want to focus more on my Thesis (Rudyard Kipling was mentioned in it). Judging by the amount of academic work I’ve found in this notebook… it only worked towards the end (but it did work!). Of course, given that I’m now writing for myself only, I can say that it’s a good thing I spent so much time plotting stories instead.

This is the third of my four 2016 notebooks, and I only discovered it came before the last one because here I chose the name of my blog in Spanish, while the next one had some blog posts already.

2016 must have been a fruitful year creativity-wise. This notebook is full of short snippets for a variety of projects I don’t even remember now. I’ve been trying to make sense of everything, but it’s impossible to know at this point whether I’m doing it the way I intended. Maybe it’s for the best, because now I can see errors and tropes I couldn’t have noticed at the time.