Getting it Down

I keep a small Memo notebook in my purse now, to capture moments of inspiration. If and when they come. Which I obviously thought was often enough to warrant the purchase of a $1.79 pad of paper and the risk of carrying a potentially-leaky pen around in my purse with me every day.

(Oh, and when I say "every day" - ahem - I mean since yesterday. Hey, fresh starts and big dreams, right?)

It's a blue Memo pad with lots of space between each line, which isn't typically my style, but I have to consider the practicality here. Lugging my preferred 8x10 blank-page Moleskin journal around wouldn't be the same, and I'd probably hurt my shoulder long-term, transporting the oversized book to and from summer camps and soccer practice. Which of course, is not where the magic of genius strikes. Although, I suppose anything is possible. In fact, it's said that J.K. Rowling wrote her Harry Potter series in all the spaces between family obligations and housework - and she's written 3,407 about Muggles, wizards and sorcery, for crying out loud!

It's blue and it's empty. But I don't expect that to be the case for long. I have some scribbles here and there, on bright pink sticky notes and across the Notes app on my phone. I just need to revisit, consolidate and transfer. Without pause for judgement.

Maybe something special is brewing among those bits and pieces of thought; those ideated concepts, born in dreams or meditation. Or conceived while wide awake, eyes forward and out my windshield in traffic; standing in line for coffee.

I think Julia Cameron nailed it when she said, "Art is not about thinking something up. It's the opposite. It's about getting something down."

Yes! Catch the inspiration and get...it...down. In small notebooks (ala Beethoven), on index cards (like Anne Lamott), scraps of paper (poet, Wallace Stephens), restaurant napkins (Earnest Hemingway). in book margins (Mark Twain), on pocket-sized Elizabethan-era table books (Shakespeare).

And in small, blue, generously spaced, $1.79 Memo note pads (Yours Truly).

So far, I only have a few things down in this little book. First, on page one: "Notebook Blog Post."

DONE!