Notes, Notebooks, and Notetakers
The beauty of a well-loved notebook
Hello, Stationary Store Lovers!
Welcome to the Friday enthusiasm edition of Weirdo Poetry! Today I’m sharing my love for notebooks and the Substackers who have helped me up my notebook game.
a blank legal pad
holds the notes from a meeting
where nothing was said
Notes, Notebooks, and Notetakers
I was a terrible notetaker in school. All through high school, college, and law school, I barely took any notes. For the most part, I didn’t need them. I was able to regurgitate the critical material simply by doing the reading and attending most of the lectures.
When I practiced law, I had to take detailed notes. Unburdened with bad notetaking habits or pedagogy, I developed my own effective note-taking system that was not dissimilar to the two-sided notebook method described in a recent post by
.When I left the law for a life of freelancing and artistic exploration, I started keeping notebooks. My early notebooks were modified bullet journals, and I always felt self-conscious about how plain and ugly they looked. Just pages and pages of my chicken scratch.
However, the notebook I’ve kept for the past seven months has been different. It’s colorful and useful. I finally cracked the code (at least for me). The secret was to play more. I started to doodle, color, paint, collage, and generally make a mess of my notebook. I filled it with ephemera and ideas. Flipping back through it is a pleasure that always sparks new connections.
The only reason this notebook is so different is because of three Substacks I discovered here. I am a proud paying subscriber of each of these newsletters.
The first is the aforementioned
by Jilian Hess. This incredible Substack features the notebooks of creatives as different as John Lennon, Emily Dickinson, Jim Henson, Sylvia Plath, and Guillermo Del Toro.Jillian’s posts are written with the beauty of a master writer and the precision of a skilled academic. Every post is delightful and inspiring. It helped me see that there were no rules.
The second notebook inspiration account is
by . Sue is an illustrator who generously shares pages from her sketchbook. Sue shows how she often goes from a sketch to a fine art painting. Her work is stunningly whimsical, and Sue is as nice as they come. Her paid subscribers also get access to digital copies of the books she illustrates.Her post about making birds with your thumb inspired this notebook page:
I made a couple of thumb birds and riffed on Sue’s technique to make a finger monster. I also wrote some haiku that day. Often Sue’s posts feature her incredible sketches with inspirational quotes.
The third notebook inspiration has been
. In Austin’s Substack, he often shows the collages and blackout poems he has made in his notebook. Perhaps the biggest influence Austin has had on my notebook is that I finally switched to a thicker point pen and started writing larger, which has made my notes much more legible.These genius notetakers inspired Cursive Cigarettes, by far my most popular post, and this notebook collage:
Now, my notebook is almost full. I expect I will be starting a new notebook in the next week. I can’t wait to see what happens next. Usually, I only share my notebook pages in my Tuesday posts for paid subscribers.
But, here are a few pages from this summer:
Earlier this summer, one particular idea began to surface in my notes. It was for a new newsletter. I wanted a place to write more about the business of art, and how my freelance copywriting allows me to keep building Weirdo Poetry. These topics didn’t feel like they fit in this newsletter.
After a lot of notebook daydreaming and brainstorming,
was born. Today is its launch day.
This is essentially a newsletter for hobbits who love the occasional quest, so long as they always get to return to piles of great books, cozy chairs, and great meals. Instead of trying to move fast and break things, I’m writing about ways to move slow and make things. This newsletter has a free edition on Fridays and an exclusive member-only edition on Tuesdays.
I hope you will give this new project a try. It has my weird fingerprints all over it. In the meantime, Weirdo Poetry will continue on as it has for years now, with perhaps an even more narrow focus on art, poetry, wonder, and the power of noticing.
Be the weird you want to see in the world!
Cheers,
Jason
I’m so inspired by all the ideas in this post! Those finger drawings are brilliant! I’m so honored that Noted has contributed a bit to your process!
My routine all throughout school was to take notes in class by hand, then organize and type up those notes, and then have that nice neat packet to study from.