I liked this lively description of the importance of notebooks.  How many do we have dotted around our homes, half scribbled in, perhaps dedicated to different topics (a journal, ideas for a business, whatever), then part abandoned, but never fully, and sometimes revisited and even repurposed later. Having tried the one-per-topic approach, I’ve come to the conclusion that best is to have one vade-mecum always to hand.  That’s the key, not how you organize your notes, but that you note them in the first place.

‘Notebooks … life rafts on a sea of memory … a harvest quick-frozen on the very day.’

For other writers on their notebooks, see Lawrence Durrell, Thoreau, and Patrick Leigh Fermor on losing his.

Source: David Esterly, The Lost Carving: A Journey to the heart of making (New York: Penguin, 2013), p. 93

Photo credit: John-Mark Kuznietsov at unsplash.com