Our Notebooks #003 [Quentin Hudspeth]

Quentin left this very thorough comment on a post to my original call for submissions.

I use composition notebooks pretty much exclusively. I flirted with the moleskine jobbies when they started appearing in Borders, but they seemed like a waste of money. I need utilitarian notebooks to work with, not fine china.
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The nice thing about composition books is that I can afford to have one for each project. Or more. Stories from the Shelter is up to seven volumes now (the ones fanned out on the bottom). I make notes in a journal style, talking to myself and working out kinks and such, so I can get pretty verbose.

Many of the books I have are Roaring Spring hand me downs from my mother-in-law from when she retired from teaching first grade. They have pretty good paper, probably a little thinner than 20 lb. It takes ink well from rollerball or fountain pen, but you can see through a bit to the writing on the other side, and you can "read" the reverse side with your fingertips. The paper is well-bleached, though, and the color has been stable for a good five years or so.


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Of the books I can find most readily, I like Mead's offering. Ink shows through the paper a little more than for the grey B&P, and there is a little braille when I use a rollerball (one of the reasons I've switched to fountain is that it forces me not to push so hard).

You can find more images of Quentin's notebooks on picasa. Thanks again, Quentin!

If you'd like your notebook featured, please leave a comment with a link to your images or blog post!

Numbered Pages [Mods]

You may have seen some scientific notebooks floating around with numbered pages. Great idea, right?

You can keep your handy-dandy composition notebook in working order by just writing the numbers in the corner of each page like Quentin Hudspeth demonstrates here. This especially nice with this little trick:

I also suggest leaving a couple of blank pages at the front for a table of contents.



This is especially helpful when your work spans multiple volumes and you need to find that obscure bit of information from twelve revisions ago that no longer exists in digital form. Of course, a TOC requires you to number the blasted pages. If only someone would publish a page-numbered comp book, that would be cool. It might be worth an extra dollar on the price.

I'm a frugal sort, so I don't mind numbering my pages by hand as I go, especially if it saves me 15 bucks from a more pricey scientific notebook.

Thanks Quentin!

Call for Submissions

Are you a habitual collector of composition notebooks or a disciplined one-book-at-a-timer?
Have any tips and tricks you use to make compies cooler, funner, and efficient-er?
Have a funny or embarrassing story involving your notebook?
Send in your ideas, stories, and photos of you and your book to gobi81@gmail.com.