On Keeping a Notebook

In my view, a good notebook should be at best partially legible - that’s what creates its mystique. It should actively repel the casual viewer, and exude a feral air that unsettles intruders. It should be a disorderly space, defiant of bourgeois convention; a rowdy heath instead of a tidy garden. Its dark magic lies in a series of collisions, the j

Only write on the right-hand page - leave the left blank. This might sound wasteful, but it’s actually very useful. That left-hand page is for your notes and interjections. It leaves you space to add in anything you missed, or to write in comments and thoughts that occur to you when you re-read. If I’m note-taking from a book, I use the left-hand p

Over the years, I’ve tried many different ways to order or index my notebooks, but none of them have worked. Instead, I am now deeply comfortable with there being no order at all. All of these different elements sit next to each other, and I love the chaos.

The second life happens when I read through them. I do this again and again, sometimes flicking through the pages, and sometimes reading carefully. They become deeply familiar spaces, and over the long term, they show me the evolution of my ideas.

Sometimes, I’ll remember a note I made, and I’ll go hunting through two or three books to find it, and the joy is that I’ll stumble across lots of other forgotten notes in the process. I will only be able to read 79 per cent of my handwriting, which is bizarrely useful because exciting new combinations of words suggest themselves while I’m trying t