My love of stationery refuses to stay stationary - it just grows and grows!!

I’m not a lover of supermarket shopping - is anyone? But at this time of the year my local French supermarkets call to me and I find it hard to resist their siren calls! Schools here return for the new school year at the end of August and because pupils have to provide their own stationery, the aisles are stuffed full of enticing pens, files, jotters, agendas, folders and, my personal downfall, notebooks. Notebooks of every size and description. Small, large, hardback, softback, covered in plastic, bejewelled, lined, blank, etc.etc. Temptation en mass.

I do feel guilty though when I buy and stockpile these notebooks. Is there any real need to buy notebooks these days when I can make notes on my telephone or my ipad either by text or by recording? Not that I do either of those things - far too technical for me!

Beside’s it’s not as though I don’t have lots of pristine notebooks waiting to be used already. I do. But there is something so different about French notebooks. For a start they rarely have lines as we know it. Pages are either blank, or have graph like squares on the pages - which take some getting used to I can tell you. Sometimes the exercise books are a mix of both blank and graph pages. Like this:

                                                                                           

I know lots of writers write directly on to their computers these days and I do too when writing a short story but for novels I love opening a brand new notebook, writing the title on the first page (can’t start without the title!) and starting to make notes about characters and possible plot lines, writing scenes and just generally making notes. 

I find that the simple act of putting pen to paper frees my thoughts far more than hitting the keys does for some reason. Then, as I transfer my notes etc to my computer it all somehow jells in my small brain and I find myself adding more detail as I type it all up. 

My publishers sent me a lovely little notebook last Christmas and here it is on top of a selection of notebooks I already have. It’s unused of course because it’s much too precious to write in!

I’m sure lots of you have a notebook fetish too. So tell me, where do you find your favourite notebooks?