These Writers Notebook entries are a conscious decision-making process to better organize my often orphaned and scattered thoughts into a much more streamlined form than just sticking them in a long, scrolling document where they will just sit and stew for years at a time. This way, I can give context to the ideas. 

Rather than simply cut and paste them, I will instead “lift” them with the term LFE (Lifted for Further Embellishment) That way, I can keep track of what ideas work and what ideas still need work. I’m an idea optimist; I feel like many ideas just haven’t been fully actualized in word form just yet, and there’s an important need to be patient. 

Now, onto the notes…

I woke up at just after 3am this morning with a very sour stomach. As the unpleasant dreams I just experienced fade quickly into the murky depths of my subconscious, I found myself glued to the toilet seat, reading a brief couple of posts in my inbox that brought me momentary pauses. They were not bad sorts of full stops, rather reminders of why it is important to take mindful and restful breaks from a relentless march of words. Also, why you must keep at least some historic record with some regularity even if that requires a bit of intentional and purposeful brevity. 

I took some notes on a book I received in the post yesterday, two days ahead of schedule. The few notes I took on my reading of just the first few pages brought me multiple pauses… I need not fully repeat myself here, as those notes will be added and reflected upon in these reflective and perhaps rather reflexive notetaking cubby holes I’ve been creating for myself.

Back to those messages in my inbox. Both have been sent to my archive to refer back to when I am feeling dry for inspiration. My inspiration well is not at all dry at the moment, actually. On the contrary, I find myself overwhelmed and at odds with several avenues of analysis which I could pursue, sadly not all at once. 

One post in particular was brief but from a new subscription, a series of new writers notebook, commonplace book style, posts that are both insightful and vulnerable. This is the message that inspired me to craft this 3am ramble. Certainly I have kept similar pages before, but over time they have been condensed and cannibalized for ideas. Perhaps that is what I’ve needed to do when my writer’s notebooks become reflections of scattered mind states and circular arguments and musings that go nowhere. Yet the need for a historical record, some thought that was drifting about in my head… this is vital to where I am at right now in life. I am thankful that I happened upon that particular Substack newsletter at this moment in time. 

(Here’s that post: https://valorieclark.substack.com/p/days-5-and-6) 

In these past several weeks I began chastising myself for my great inconsistencies in writing production and the highly variable quality of my scribblings. I began to force my ideas into several buckets and gave myself a loose daily posting schedule going into 2023, so that I have some vague but meaningful direction in organizing my thoughts more effectively. This exercise… has been extremely helpful. Even when I falter, I recognize that I never fail to work on at least a handful of ideas each day, and this leads to a nice productive chain of thought linking.

But there was still something lacking in my process. I do have a Moleskine book for taking handwritten notes, but my hands sometimes don’t like to cooperate. I write in cursive hoping to at least be legible and sometimes my cursive turns to incomprehensible doodles due to my chronic fatigue and nerve maladies. 

So, I abandoned my physical book for digital note-taking once again, and am finding myself cutting perhaps 90 to 95 percent of my notes down on a regular basis. This is because frankly,  a lot of it is junk. I don’t feel that way about these words here I am producing, but in the past I have simply rambled on for the sake of putting words out there for lack of anything better to do in the middle of the night.

I don’t know what from these inconsistent brain dump sessions I’m re-initializing today will stand the test of time and my happy delete button trigger. What I do know is I have found quite abruptly a reason for pause and the conception of a new powerful urge to record my life as it happens from this moment forward as we enter the final quarter of the 2022 calendar.