Notebooks Are Like Shoes, You Need More Than One Kind

Apparently I need seven kinds.

People are very into notebooks right now. Some people have notebook systems: one for tasks and goals, another for quotes and inspiration, and so on. Together they form a wonderfully cohesive, meaningful whole.

I look at people like Austin Kleon , with his satisfying four-notebook system, with great envy. If only I had a system, everything would make sense! I would know what to do! I’d have such lovely stacks of finished notebooks, with all the answers contained therein!

I don’t have any sort of system, but I do have a lot of notebooks that I use for a lot of things. I had to look around my office, and start making piles of notebooks, to figure out what exactly is going on around here.

It turns out I have a seven-notebook system that is definitely not a system. Let’s call it a seven-notebook situation.

Is that a problem? I would argue that it isn’t. I think that notebooks are like shoes: You need different kinds for different purposes. Hiking shoes, running shoes, sandals, house slippers, dress shoes—even if you only had one of each category of shoe, you’d probably have at least a half dozen.

So. My notebook situation is not a roadmap that anyone else should follow. Notebooks show up in my house for the same reason shoes do. If I take up a new activity, like running, or if I move to a new climate that’s colder or wetter, I’ll buy the right shoes for that thing I’m doing. As long as I keep doing the thing, I’ll keep replacing the shoes.

So here’s my notebook situation:

Cheap drugstore notebooks

Yellow legal pads, spiral notebooks, the cheaper the better. I fill these constantly. Mostly these are for work. I’ll take notes during an interview or a meeting, I’ll make lists, I might outline a story or try to work out how to reorganize book chapters. I’ll write out an itinerary for a trip. Sometimes there are grocery lists or other such daily practical matters in these pages. There’s nothing really private in these, it’s just the daily messy scratching of a person with a job.

Index cards

Not technically a notebook, but sort of. I buy 500 at a time and burn through them. Especially useful for fiction, but sometimes for nonfiction, too. I might write down events and shuffle the order around. I might write down story beats or scenes and spread those out on the floor to see how they come together.

I also used to carry a wallet like this that had room for a pen and a couple index cards. I would use these for writing down incidental notes, phone numbers, directions, making lists, or handing out to people who needed a piece of paper. Now I carry pocket sketchbooks (see below) for that purpose instead.

Slightly Nicer Notebooks

These are generally lined Moleskines, Leuchtturms, or some other journal. They’re really more like diaries, except I don’t write in them daily or on any kind of schedule. I write in them when I need to work something out. It could be a personal problem, an emotional meltdown, or some kind of big-picture creative/work issue that I’m grappling with. (“Why am I writing this newsletter?” is a question that has appeared in those pages before.)

I’ve learned that if I think about a problem, I’ll ruminate endlessly and get nowhere. But if I write about it, I’ll either write my way to a solution or I’ll get so bored with the sound of my own voice that I’ll just drop it and go think about something else.

Pocket notebooks

Sometimes it’s a Travelers Notebook sketchbook (my current favorite because ink from a pen or marker doesn’t bleed through the pages), or it might be a Moleskine cahier journal or a Field Notes journal. They’re all about 3x5, which means that they fit in a pocket or any sort of bag you might carry around. In these I might do anything from a nice little drawing to measurements for a new sofa. It’s just an everyday place to jot things down. But I don’t use it every day, or on any kind of schedule.

Sometimes these pages look nice, sometimes they look like scribbles. Because I don’t carry any sort of color with me, I will sometimes pre-paint a few pages so I can draw on top of random bits of color.

Cheap sketchbooks for art experiments

I buy Canson watercolor sketchbooks whenever they go on sale and fill them up with color swatches, tests of art supplies, ugly sketches when I’m trying to learn something new, art that I’m making as part of a class I’m taking, or, more lately, drawings I make at a local life drawing session. This is just decent-ish paper I can burn through and show no one.

But just to prove that I really do make a total mess in these, I’ll open one at random:

Good sketchbooks for making art

Here are all the sketchbooks I have on the go at the moment

I usually have several of these on the go at once for different purposes¹. A travel sketchbook I take on a trip. An around-town sketchbook for outings with my local Urban Sketchers group or any other time I feel like going out just to sketch. Even one just for illustrations I make for this newsletter. Or one to help me learn a new language. Or to keep track of birds I’ve seen.

Why so many? Sometimes it’s about the format: I want a certain size or orientation, or a certain type of paper, to do a certain thing. But I think it’s also because I’m an author and I tend to think in terms of books. If I’m going to draw birds, I’d like to have a book of birds. It doesn’t matter if it takes years to fill it up, at the end I’ll have a book of that one thing and that appeals to me.

Here’s a playlist of many sketchbook flip-through videos I’ve posted over the years.

My “around town” sketchbook is the one that comes closest to being a chronology of everyday life, but even that is more for when I’m specifically going out to sketch. It doesn’t capture everything, every day. That’s something I’ve started to do with:

Visual diary/casual sketchnotes

This is a new thing, and I’m not sure I’m going to stick with it. I found an old blank Moleskine sketchbook (and an old Leuchttrum 1917 sketchbook, which is almost the same thing except the paper is bright white, not ivory) and started testing art supplies on the paper. The paper is thicker than a journal, but a bit thinner than most art sketchbooks, and really only good for pencils and markers and pens, which make them feel less precious. I decided to just burn through one with any little thing I felt like scribbling down.

It turned into kind of a cool little project, where I was just writing down any vaguely odd or interesting thing that happened during the day, and maybe drawing a picture to go with it. (I wrote more about this here).

It’s a version of Mike Rohde’s sketchnotes idea, which looks like this.

Will I keep this up? I don’t know. It feels more like something I’ve decided that I SHOULD do, rather than something that I’m already doing because it’s just how I get through the day.

What’s your notebook situation?

I’d really like to know! Tell us in the comments.

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Speaking of sketchbooks…

After I drew the shoes for the illustration you see above, I got interested in the idea of drawing shoes and how our shoes tell a story. So this week, supporters of this newsletter are…drawing shoes! For just a few bucks, you can join us, and you’ll get access to this archive of just about anything you can do in a sketchbook. Join us!

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The Bit at the End

Salt Lake City! I’ll be speaking about my new book, The Tree Collectors, at Red Butte Garden & Arboretum on Thursday, July 17. Tickets available here.

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Take one of my online writing or art classes here

1. Here’s a rundown of my favorite brands, but the short version is: Stillman & Birn zeta or beta for most things, Etchr hot press if I want to get really fancy. Moleskine if I want a really big sketchbook, or an accordion sketchbook—formats I don’t use a lot but they make really nice ones.