The Pocket Notebook Makes the Writer

And yes, she rather liked the porn…

while smoking thin cigarettes and sipping absinthe, of course

I have a couple of books out, 100 percent of my income is from writing, I’ve given readings to large audiences, I’ve written and produced a weekly radio show, I’ve published hundreds of articles in dozens of magazines and journals, I’ve published—and been paid for—a porn story, and of course I produce this blog.

In short, I’m a writer.

But even with all that validation, I find it hard to say I’m a writer, and when I first met the Diva it wasn’t anything in the above litany that convinced her I’m actually a writer, though I surely told her all of it—including my porn pseudonym—in a spasm of first date disclosure madness. No, what convinces her, and what convinces me day by day, is the simple act of reaching in my pocket and pulling out a pen and a notebook.

This I believe: it is the Moleskine notebook and Pilot G2 .07 black pen in my pocket that make me a writer.

I first began the practice of carrying a notebook everywhere when living in California’s Central Coast, at roughly the same time that I began publishing satire in New Times, an alternative weekly based in San Luis Obispo. My first notebooks were the little memo pads with spiral bindings, and they were okay (if a little dorky) when carried in a shirt pocket with a pen clipped beside. They were terrible, though, in a pants pocket: the covers degraded, the pages curled and tore, and the spiral binding was uncomfortable. Still, they’re cheap and I filled dozens with briefly noted ideas, poems, and snatches of prose.

When I began to write commercially I felt the need to signal greater seriousness and acquired the first of several blank Moleskine notebooks, the 5.5”x3.5” versions with 192 pages. A little pricey, but mostly great, as the larger page size allowed larger thoughts, and I occasionally wrote whole essays and articles in bars and coffee shops—while smoking thin cigarettes and sipping absinthe, of course. They can be crammed in a pants pocket, but they’re thick, create a noticeable bulge, and the quip, ‘Is that a notebook in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?’ is only (slightly) funny the first couple of times you hear it.

For a time after moving to San Francisco I foreswore pocket notebooks and favored instead the larger Moleskines, blank, carried in a black man bag that, I am tediously and constantly informed, looks dorky… and incidentally, am I the only one who hears ‘man bag’ and thinks ‘scrotum’? (I am? Then never mind.) The bag and larger notebook combo was not bad, as having access to those large, lovely, creamy pages (so like the skin of a Rubens nude) encouraged not only longer works, but also sketches, mind maps, rubbings, and other ephemera that will amuse my future biographers. And yet, I had to grant that the dork factor was high, even for a writer, and carrying a bag everywhere required a level of commitment that I prefer to reserve for relationships with, you know, humans. Far too often I would find myself with no bag and no notebook and thus, far too often I was no writer at all but merely an impostor who talked a good game. ‘All blog and no pen,’ as they (don’t) say (yet).

I’ve stuck with G2’s through all my notebook iterations. They’re cheap, long lasting and smooth writing, and when I forget to click them closed before returning them to my pockets, the stains they leave are a pleasant blue black that goes well with absinthe smears.

Now I’m back to using pocket Moleskines, but the version of my amanuensis currently favored is the thinner, lined, more flexible version. The paper is nice, the affect on my silhouette is minimal, and the ruled lines gently prod me to write rather than indulge my poseur sketching habit. Best of all, they’re always with me. This essay, in fact, was written in one, whilst sitting in Gateway Croissants, at Golden Gate and Larkin in San Francisco.

Should you wish to be a writer, to feel yourself a writer, you could do worse than acquiring, and filling, dozens and dozens of pocket notebooks.

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Tagged as: philosophy, writing