[1]cygnoir.net Profile Photo [2]cygnoir.net Fiction, foibles, and fountain pens from a black swan with digital wings. Posts about writing, books, public libraries, community, games, analog delight, and food. • [3]About • [4]Now • [5]On This Day • [6]Reading • [7]Writing • [8]Analog • [9]Photos • [10]Bookmarks • [11]Racial Justice • [12]Faves • [13]Search • [14]Subscribe • [15]Stats [16]Jan 20, 2024 ∞ How I Pocket Notebook Many different creativity systems^[17]1 stress the importance of the “capture” or “inbox” step — whatever you call it, it’s a place where you gather your ideas. It should be frictionless and ubiquitous. Though we exist in an age where technology has wrested the “frictionless and ubiquitous” narrative away from analog tools, I maintain that the old ways can be the best ones in this case. Enter the pocket notebook. Much has been written by smarter minds about the pocket notebook and its myriad uses. For this post, I’ll be focusing on my particular setup and sharing how I use it in the hopes you might also find it useful. First, the pocket notebook itself. My rules are minimal: The paper has to take fountain pen ink well, and the notebook can’t be something too fancy to use for any old thing. Currently I’m using a [18]Lochby Pocket Notebook refill for the dot-grid Tomoe River paper, which is more fountain pen ink friendly than others I’ve tried. And this would be enough for my frictionless and ubiquitous capture notebook, except I am very rough on notebooks and wanted a cover to keep it somewhat intact. My local stationery store, [19]Oblation Papers and Press, sold me a beautiful leather cover by [20]Goby Design that fits pocket-sized refills like the Lochby one I use as well as pocket notebooks from Field Notes, Goulet Pens, and Moleskine. The leather is sturdy and has worn beautifully. OK, notebook in a cover.^[21]2 That’s enough, right? Well ... not quite. As I started to use this combination, I realized that I needed something to keep it closed when I wasn’t using it, and open while I was. There are fancy brass clips that Traveler’s Notebook aficionados have shared, but I’m lower-fuss than that. I had a couple large-size magnetic [22]OliClips lying around, so I tried affixing one to the front cover and another to the back. Et voila! A makeshift magnetic closure plus bookmark plus notebook-holder-opener (whatever that’s properly called). an open pocket notebook in an olive green leather cover with iridescent OliClips on front and back and an iridescent Kaweco Sport fountain pen Now we have a notebook in a cover with a magnetic closure and bookmark. We’re done, right? But but but ... what if it had a pen loop? I tried sliding on a spare pen loop, but it bulked everything up awkwardly. I stared at this a long time until I simply slipped the clip on my Kaweco Sport onto the edge of the OliClip on the back cover. And it stayed! I haven’t tested the pen-clippiness with something larger than a pocket pen, so exercise caution here. an olive green leather pocket notebook cover with OliClips and an iridescent Kaweco Sport fountain pen OK, now I’m done. 😂 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 1. I’ve stopped using the phrase "productivity systems" because it implies that our most important work is that of production. Creation is much more important to me. [23]↩︎ 2. And now I have The Smiths’ “Girlfriend in a Coma” in my head: “Notebook in a cover, I know, I know, it’s serious.” [24]↩︎ • [25]#Photos • [26]#Fountain Pens • Kudos • [28]✍️ Reply by email • [29]✴️ Also on Micro.blog [30]Also on Bluesky Copyright © 1998-2024 [31]Halsted M. Bernard · [32]☑️ [33] [] 🕸️💍 Hosted by [34]Micro.blog. Designed with ♥ by [35]Matt Langford. 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