Broadcasting Brain’s Mark Dykeman reveals that he is “a bit borderline obsessive-compulsive” when it comes to his paper notebooks. Though he admits that he “massacres” and “abuses” his notebooks, he loves writing in pen and paper. He goes on to reveal that notebooks are a “great, if somewhat archaic, way to capture your thoughts.”

A new notebook feels wonderful.  It’s full of promise;  of undiscovered words; of unseen ideas; of unknown adventures.  Sometimes it’s hard to write the first words in a notebook because you don’t want to spoil the pristine pages, but then you get over that as you start writing, doodling, and otherwise filling in the space.  It’s great.

Every now and then I go through the notebooks that I have on the go and see what’s there.  A lot of it is unusable junk, some of it’s OK, occasionally there’s a little flash of insight that’s worth chasing.  So I doodle, write, and add more to the notebook.  More ideas come and go.  Lots of fun.

Then I start noticing that there are more pages with writing on them than pages without writing.  I start cursing the fact that I started writing a note in the middle of something else.  I’m running out of room and the more that I look at the notebook, the more that a single thought starts to dominate:  screw it.   Use a different notebook, one that’s cooler and that hasn’t been marked in yet.  Then I start thinking “most of this notebook is utter crap.  I should just toss it and start a new one.  I’ll just rip out the good parts and keep them to be reused later.”

More of The stimulating yet relentless insanity of paper notebooks at Broadcasting Brain.