I had a weekend of making notes. Little, tiny notes.

I reach a stage with a project when it takes over my subconscious and formed thoughts start popping out like acne on a sixteen year old. I see connections, images, tiny details and I think ‘I must remember this when I get back to my laptop.’ Of course, I don’t remember, and in the past, quite a lot of those shards fell down through the cracks, never to be retrieved.

I have done many writing courses and listened to many writers talking, and, as advised by them, I have always carried a notebook and pencil. But I have rarely used it because I never managed to sit down and write proper stuff in it, like I thought you were supposed to – you know, fully formed journal or diary writing, like Pepys, or Alastair Campbell. Anything else I viewed as cheating, so being an all or nothing type,  nothing won.

But recently I have seen the light: notebook=sketchbook. And my notebook is essential now. It’s full of little scrawls that, being only intelligible to me, are most certainly not for posterity. But they are bloody useful. Hence: “Ventilation hole in living room floor”, and “I have forgiven you Jesus: Stephen”. Really, really useful.