Searching Through the Notebooks

I have recently experienced the misfortune (opportunity?) of relocating my living quarters several times in the past few months. I'm nomadic by nature, so I don't have much stuff. My limit is always what will fit in my car. I wish I could get it down to one suitcase and a couple of bags, but I have too many interests and subsequent supplies at the moment. I've picked up too many trinkets and keepsakes in my recent travels, and I desperately need to sift through them to decide what stays and what goes.

The only items that have traveled cross-country, from relatives' houses to city apartments are the notebooks. Some of my older ones, full of finished or abandoned projects, are still in Los Angeles in a storage unit, but the dozen or so that I'm still using are all safely resting in my backpack.

Since high school, I have been wildly overprotective about who reads my notebooks. It's not the judgement that I fear, it's that I'm the only one who can translate the sloppy, broken thoughts, lists and historical facts. Flipping through my notebook is like taking a glimpse at my brain processes. Several pages of prose are followed by a list of Sumerian deities, a journal entry, current event reports that caught my eye. Rough drafts of the same narrative are scattered across several notebooks, and I am the only one who can remember which one holds the first part of chapter five and which one contains the final paragraphs.



When I'm feeling unmotivated by a current project, I'll flip through my writings, searching for some stray idea or thought that might push me forward or turn me back to a project I'd forgotten about. Either way, the notebooks are like a jolt of electricity that jump starts my creative process. Without them, I might be one of those writers who stares at a blank page for hours before turning my attention to Tumblr or reddit and tell myself that I'll try writing again tomorrow.

The notebooks are my own version of the method of loci, or as BBC's Sherlock recently referred to it: my mind palace. I have forgotten any of the things I've written down, they're merely stored away in the mind palace where I can revisit them when the need strikes. If I feel stuck or directionless, I can sift through my musings and often I will find the missing pieces of the current puzzle that plagues me.

Without the notebooks, I would be just another person desperately seeking the motivation to do what I feel is my calling. Without them, my gift would often be wasted.