It’s National Stationery Week!
If you didn’t know, and why should you, I am an enormous stationery fan. Which makes this a pretty happy week for me.
I’ve loved all things pens and paper, notebooks and writing since childhood. I used to collect those fancy novelty rubbers (or erasers as I think the Americans call them), and the best part of back-to-school time was getting to choose new pens or pencils. Oh okay, it was the only good part of going back to school. The feel of a new notebook still fills me with joy. The potential of it!
And I suppose now is as good a time as any to make the confession: I am the type of notebook addict who buys the beautiful ones and then fails to use them out of fear I will spoil them.
At least that was the type of notebook addict I was until recently when I heard someone say, and I can’t remember where, that your thoughts deserve somewhere beautiful to live.
And, just like that, my years of hoarding the pretty notebooks ended. Of course the ideas we’re working on deserve a nice home. Why would we be spending our precious and limited time on earth with them if they didn’t deserve it?
In fact, is the notebook really good enough for that … no I’m taking it too far.
I digress. Back to National Stationery Week, which brings me quite a lot of joyful reminiscences … and quite a lot of promotional emails too!
Because I’m subscribed (no surprise) to quite a few stationery brands and shops, including Under the Rowan Trees, Archer and Olive, JetPens, The Journal Shop and OhhDeer! The whole week has been chock full of stationery I didn’t know existed but nowl somehow, need in my life. So far I have resisted the urge to make a single purchase, but I’m one discount code away from regrets.
I used to subscribe to OohDeer’s monthly stationery box, which was beautiful annd provided me with things I still use, but I do not need it again, I do not need it again, I do not need it again!
And I’m also digressing again. Back to the topic in hand, and the writer content this blog posts title promised: my must have stationery items as a writer.
So what’s in my writers bag?
Do I actually have a writers bag? Well, no*. In fact, I generally keep all of my most used stationery supplies to hand on a nearby shelf, but if I did have a dedicated writing bag, I would definitely put these absolute faves in it.
And before I get down to it, this is not going to be an aesthetic, everything matches and is all shiny type of post. This is more an eclectic, mismatched, looks like it’s been pulled together at a jumble sale across time and space kind of thing.
Let’s start with the basics …
PENS
While I do love a fancy fountain pen, they’re not something I use every day. I gravitate to a basic ballpoint pen. Black for preference. Currently I’m using…
A Zebra Z-Grip medium point that my mum leant me and I haven’t got round to giving back yet. It’s very nice. I prefer a fine point, something less than a 0.5 makes me happiest but this has a good, smooth write.
And the black one from a Staedtler multicoloured 10 pack that I found on sale is my every day pen. It works pretty smoothly and the pack gives me enough variety to be able to see which of my notes relate to which characters/plot points/themes. They’re also a medium point because I couldn’t find a fine point with pretty colours. And since it’s tough to colour-code without colours, I went with these.
For the fanciest of work, which I usually reserve for my diary, I use a couple of blue & purple pens from the Aechy Curve Pen set of 18. The pretty curve bit on one end rarely works, but the colours are nice. I’d opt for a more normal fineliner in future though, as having 50% unusable isn’t worth it.
All of which, or rather the selection that I’m currently using, I keep with together in a sleek cream pencil case.
NOTEBOOKS
This is where my obsession comes in. Buckle up my friends.
Ret A6 Pocket Notebook: This is my commonplace book. It’s where I keep the things, usually quotations, that inspire me in my writing. A beautiful phrase here, a depth I hadn’t been able to express there. It’s a lovely paper to write on and is small enough to keep with me. Although I have discovered that I don’t like the elastic closure. It makes a strange dent in the book so I leave it unhooked now. It also gets pushed out of shape if you use the pen holder down the spine but since I never use that as I keep my pens in a little case near by it’s not been bothering me.
A6 Kraft Notebook. I bought these in a multi pack a few years ago and I’m finally coming to the last one. They’re super useful, especially if you’re the type, like me, who worries about messing them up and making mistakes as they’re not particularly pretty in the first place, it feels lower stakes. I know that sounds strange but IFKYK. These are when I keep my novel notes. I have ones for characters, ones for various plot ideas and one for lines or descriptions that randomly pop into my brain but are seemingly unconnected, or at least I haven’t made the connections yet.
I use the next two notebook sets primarily for studying.
As someone with a love of learning, this is something I try to keep up all the time. Even if it’s only for 10 or 20 minutes a week. Ever since I was a child I’ve had a fascination with Ancient Egypt but I gave up on wanting to pursue it when a teacher told me I wasn’t clever enough to study the subject at University. Cue me being a dweeb and giving up. I may not be planning on a career change, but it’s something that makes me happy and listening to a few minutes of an audiobook or practicing a couple of lines of Heiroglyphs isn’t going to take time away from writing and, you never, it may even feed into it!
A5 Notebook:These have rainbow coloured spines, I mean, ‘Hello colour-coding’! My inner planner is very happy when I look at these little books lined up neatly on a shelf. They feel good to write in as well.
Rhino Exercise Book, 10 pack. This is just a basic squared paper. I bought the squared by mistake, because I like the colour and clearly didn’t read the description properly. But it turned out to be perfect for learning Hieroglyphs.
So those are my very basic writers stationery must-haves.
I don’t use a huge variety in my day-to-day writing, and I may have meandered away from strictly writerly essentials, but I hope you found it useful or interesting to see how I use more old Skool analogue tools in my writing. All of this is, of course, alongside Evernote, Scrivener and the MyStory app.
if you’d like a little glimpse into more of my stationery and its non-novel based uses, let me know, I could chatter on about it for hours.
Oh and do you follow Jazza on YouTube? If you don’t, he’s an Artist who also loves stationery and a couple of week ago he posted a huge Japanese stationery haul. There’s an eraser there to make you jealous. It’s here if you’d like to watch it
* While my eye is firmly on those gorgeous Galen bags, it’s an extravagance I can’t justify.