Two Notebooks

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Shown above are two of my notebooks--the Scribbledehobbledehoydenii I call them because I was once young and who wouldn't want to conjure up a word like that? The spiral-bound one is the Wedding Scribbledeobbledehoyden, and the black one is titled Dark Flame, or: Plum Pudding. There are reasons.

I'm just finishing up filling up the one and chanced across the other and was struck by how different they are. The one has a number of impromptu collages in it, including one (below) where I apparently wrote a story in and around it. (pictured below). Is the story any good? I have no idea. The amount of work it would take to decipher my handwriting is significantly more than it would take to simply write another piece of flash fiction for it. It's also jam-filled with loose papers: A menu from the reception of the titular wedding, a postcard from France, some dried leaves (below), a stamped and sealed letter to Michael Bishop that I was about to mail when I learned he had just died. Also throwaways, ephemera, and scribbled notes of no particular import.

The black notebook is much more austere. A few doodles, and a slip of notes or two, but almost entirely scenes from stories I'm working on, lists of things I must write, a wheel of potential novels I must choose one from, diagrams of sections of stories that are giving me trouble. 

Except for my execrable handwriting, they might have been compiled by two completely different writers.

Proof positive that function follows form.

 

 

 

 

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