Little Green Book

For the first time in a long while, I’m keeping a little notebook to keep stray ideas. In fact, this blog entry started out in the little green book.

I’ve never been one to keep a journal. It’s too much stress. I’ve gotta write in it every day, or it doesn’t count. I’ve gotta scribble the boring and mundane details of my every day experience, which generally I don’t want to glance through at some later date. “Wow, I…ate breakfast. And then took a nap. Excitement.”

But lately, I’ve enjoyed having it around. I bought it when I was in Boston so I could write down anything interesting that I might want to blog about later, but I’ve kept adding to it since I got back. Story ideas, ideas for the blog, little doodles, whatever I happen to be thinking about; all of it goes into my little green book.

It’s a large part of why I write in my blog every day now, instead of in sporadic, half-hearted updates once a month.  It’s not just a way to make sure I remember these little ideas, but it’s a way of thinking this way again.

Writing always seems, to me, a way of thinking. When someone is writing, they’re taking thoughts that are not concrete or focused and putting them into definite words that can be understood by other people. And it’s something that can be exercised and improved. And it’s something that can atrophy and become very difficult to do.

By keeping my little green book, I’m constantly practicing and refining and figuring out how to put things into words.

And one of these days, I’ll use it to figure out how to end an entry.

Dylan Charles