Notebooks–as in nice books in which you can jot down ideas, stories, observations, the story of your life, anything you like. Or give as gifts!

Notebooks I use

The one thing I don’t use a notebook for is to jot down writing ideas and snippets. I never got into that, although had I started writing much earlier, maybe I would. I do have a spreadsheet on my computer/iPad, which I use for ideas, though.

For many years I’ve written a journal, related to my house and garden. Although this started as a sort of diary, it also references events, sowing seeds and planting out, weather issues, holidays and other events, good and bad. I also put my secret thoughts in. It makes interesting reading, especially when I discover I first had an idea for doing something over ten years ago! The notebooks I use for this are from Paperblanks, with a smart cover and a magnetic flap. They aren’t cheap, but they last me quite a long time–longer and longer as I use them less these days.

I also have small spiralbound notebooks for the weekly checks on my guinea pigs, and notes on other events in their lives. These are important for monitoring their weight and repetition of illnesses, and things like that. It’s also useful to refer back when something happens to one pig that I know happened to another, so I can look back and compare (and hopefully learn from experience.) I also have notebooks for birdwatching, although I use these less these days as I have an App, too.

Notebooks I’ve made

My paperback publishing company starting promoting notebooks as a product, and I have one for the Princelings series and one for my first four guinea pigs (which might be a series).

The Princelings Notebook

This has my chapter illustrations and quotes to accompany them, up to book 6, Bravo Victor; you can look at it here. Click the buying link if you like it (check onto your own country site using the links top right).

George’s Guinea Pig World Notebook

George’s Guinea Pig World is my guinea pig’s blog, currently run by Roscoe and Biggles. This Notebook – the Fab Four, was the nickname for the first group I had, Fred, George, Victor and Hugo. Princelings fans might be interested in what the original characters looked like!

I may get around to further ones with photos of my later boys: there’s the Jubilee Seven (Dylan, Dougall, Victor, Humphrey, Hector, Colman and Kevin – who have a couple of stories in Critters and Crises); the Famous Five (Oscar, Midge, Percy, Bertie and Biggles) and the Hampshire Four (Neville, Roscoe, Locksley and Ludo), although Bertie and Biggles are also part of the Hampshire Four/Six, and Neville and Roscoe could stray into the previous group, too.

These are really projects that keep me occupied, looking at pictures and deciding what to place in a notebook. I enjoy them, and they make nice presents.

Notebooks are not cheap, though. I like to leave plenty of pages for you to use, and it’s the number of pages that puts the price up!

N is for Notebooks #AtoZChallenge2021

4 thoughts on “N is for Notebooks #AtoZChallenge2021

  • 16 April, 2021 at 3:04 pm
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    Notebooks are so valuable!!

  • 16 April, 2021 at 4:44 pm
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    I use notebooks all the time! I keep one next to me while I am researching my new books and then I transcribe, edit and organize the notes in either Google Docs or something similar.

    But for the project I am on now (and related to my April blogging) I am using a combination of Google docs and Google sheets. It is working rather well.


    Tim Brannan, The Other Side: 2021: The A to Z of Monsters

  • 16 April, 2021 at 9:35 pm
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    I always wanted to jot down ideas and bits and pieces and draft poems in notebooks but never really learned the habit. Like you, I use mine more as a daily (though much less often nowadays) record of things I did, things I should be doing…
    I’ve never met a writer who doesn’t love notebooks 🙂

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