My notebook

You may accuse me of overstating this, but you’d be wrong. If you want to be a writer, any kind of writer, the very first thing you have to do is start a writer’s notebook.

I use a college rule marble covered composition notebook. I coat them in inspirational quotes, fortune cookie fortunes and more stickers than any woman my age needs. It’s got coffee and dirt stains. It’s wrinkled and beaten up because I drag it with me literally everywhere. It doesn’t matter what it looks like, though, so long as it isn’t too pretty to be intimidating. What matters is what goes inside it.

Now, there are some things that are going to go into every writer’s notebook that are specific to that writer, or to that writing style. A poet won’t keep the same notebook as a journalist, and not everyone needs to keep a…