#64

Of course. But one day you realise you don’t have to be a professional calligrapher to write longhand. It’s something you do for yourself, not something you do to communicate yr skillz.

1 Like
#65

I just wanted to say this thread (and the Field notes one) reminded me of this practice. Ordered a few Field notes to jot down ideas while in the process of writing/recording my next album this month and it’s already proved supremely useful. Devoted a Field Notes to the album specifically, with indexing for various tracks, and a section devoted to “general macro ideas” or random things to try out later. Took it along to the beach with me yesterday just in case, and sure enough while in a sun-induced haze was bombarded with ideas for things to try when I got home. Jotting them down both saved them from being lost in my head, but also as soon as they are written down, I no longer have to concern myself with remembering them, and even more new ideas can come more freely.

This whole process is super new to me but I’m already so grateful for experimenting with it.

9 Likes
#66

I’ve been reluctant to tell you all about JetPens because receipt of their regular emails will - if you are anything like me - immediately consume ten minutes of your life. But those will be ten happy minutes.

They’re my source for Pilot Coleto Hi-Tec-C 0.4mm black gel pens.

My other fixation is Franklin-Christoph fountain pens, but thus far I’ve been able to limit myself to only one of their pens. But it’s sooooo goooood …

7 Likes
#67

I liked buying nice paper and writing things, and then I didn’t use them, because they were so nice and I wanted to save them for something special, which I never did.

Now I use these things and it’s more fun if they are nice and precious.
10 Euros for a notebook every two months is not much money, considered realistically.

2 Likes
#68

oh NO, these look perfect for math with colors

3 Likes
#69

Then you will definitely not want to notice that they have 3- and 5- way multi-pens that you can customize by both color and fineness of the pen and oh wow they also have a pencil that fits in the multipen and an eraser now you know why I get excited about this sort of stuff.

2 Likes
#70

nah, fuck it. I can barely read my own chicken scratch half the time, but I still have to get the idea down, even if it looks like a Cy Twombly painting.

my recent moleskine is almost full, but I think the leuchturm notebooks are cheaper so I’ll probably switch. I have no brand loyalty, just that it should be acid free grid paper with a hardcover or it won’t survive living inside my bag, and I need to be able to go back to it 5 years or more later and not have it be all faded. I scribble or sketch really fast and sloppy though so I need really fast drying pens or everything gets all smudged. I liked finer point pens before, but they were always getting jammed up because of my messy style, and unfortunately I cannot stand pencils.

struggling now to find a small sketchbook that is affordable for water media and graphite since they fill up quick. 100% cotton seems difficult, especially in smaller sizes. I got a hahnemühle watercolor sketchpad, but I found it unusably bad to the point I suspect I may have gotten one from a bad batch where the sizing is messed up.

1 Like
#71

fairly recent convert to bullet journalling here as well.
i’ve always loved nice papers and pens.
after using a leuchtturm dot grid notebook for a while, i’m now set on these:

yes, there are cheaper options, but i’m loving to work with these at home and on the road.

2 Likes
#72

This might belong to a separate thread, not really sure. It does fit within note-taking"…

Anyway : I saw “bullet journal” mentioned several times in this thread and looked it up, I’m apparently outside enough of most social media to never have had heard of this before :slight_smile:. Still, it looks interesting and I think some elements of that method could be useful for me.

So, for those of you using this method (or part of it), do you think it’s useful for a more typical note-taking organization rather than “journaling” ? I usually take notes related to a number of specific projects (i.e. one game idea, one music project, etc.) and I also have some more random notes not directly related to one specific thing.

I rarely take written notes for things like appointments/etc. as a digital calendar synced all over the place is more efficient for these for me.

The index idea mentioned earlier definitely looks like an improvement over what I’m doing now so I’m going to try that. Keeping related notes to spreads of two pages also seems smart, even if these spreads are not contiguous (I would just need to refer the pages numbers in the index and have the next page for the same project also written from the previous spread).

Apart from that, I’m not really sure. The monthly page seems like a potential good idea, I could try that. I’m not sure about the rest, so any suggestion is welcome.

Btw, this thread made me rethink my use of frixion pens for things that are not my work notebook (which is another thing, this one lives in front of my keyboard and is dedicated to work things only). I bought a few (cheap) pens and the uni-ball eye someone mentioned previously is my favourite so far.

I also got a few small notebooks as the one I bought a few months ago and that was intended to be used daily (a nice small Zequenz) is far too thick at about 200 pages and I just don’t carry it everywhere as I should. I got a Traveler’s Notebook (nice but a bit small), a Muji passport sized notebook (nicer cover but same size) and the one I think I’m going to use, a Muji 80 pages notebook (same size as a field notes) with a thick enough cover, that opens nicely and fits in any pocket.

Hopefully these will be useful soon, worst case scenario the total cost was the same as one good beer or lunch :slight_smile:.

2 Likes
#73

I carry a twist bullet pencil (very nice but unfortunately may be among the last of its kind, considering the site seems to be more or less abandoned) and a field notebook (Code & Quill, a tad more expensive than most, but the paper’s decent and it’s stitched instead of stapled) everywhere I go. I’m also trying out Code & Quill’s three month planner to interesting effect. I write a fair bit and somewhat recently took to writing my rough drafts longhand, starting with legal pads but more recently switching to Sorta (a surprisingly well-designed clip notebook).

I actually had to re-teach myself cursive when I decided to dive into longhand, predominantly, as my print is slow and atrocious. So that’s been interesting, though I’ve meaning to make a go of learning proper Spencerian script.

I don’t use a notebook too much with music, mainly because I don’t have enough hardware that would warrant such, and I’ve never made music in such a way that I would have much to write; however, I do have an old microkorg with plenty of custom presets that I do log in a little dedicated notebook (I just keep a crummy notebook with a crummy ballpoint pen in the pocket of its carrying case).

1 Like
#74

I was deeply into notebooking through the 90s into the early 2000s, in a self-obsessed text/object art project to map the chaos of my mind as I pursued continual personal development. I found the notebooks I liked in this incredible art supply shop in Philly in the early 90s (which in my memory I now liken to Ollivanders wand shop in Harry Potter: an old row house filled with chaotic stacks of sketchbooks in the aisles, shelves and drawers going up to the ceiling filled with brushes and pencils and charcoal), and bought all I could, devastated when the old man running it died and his survivors closed up shop. I never found the same notebooks again. They were quite fat but could just squeeze into my back pocket, and I modified these special notebooks to have a pen holster and several sets of tabs on the ends and corners of the pages, marking the subject of the page and links between pages. I very much miss that level of dedication to this project, and they are an incredible record of my thoughts at that time.

IMG-6869
IMG-6869.jpg3024×4032 2.77 MB

16 Likes
#75

image
CE864E2F-BA9E-406F-A7D5-10D70B799E06.jpeg3024×4032 2.7 MB
image
BF3C74D2-0E15-4041-9B6C-92D490E09BF4.jpeg3024×2760 1.92 MB

I’ve filled up an entire notebook with lecture notes since July. I feel like I’m growing into this table of contents thing quite nicely.

I’m curious, for those of you who keep project notes in a notebook, how much “process” do you record and what sorts of things go into that? to-do lists? recaps of what you’ve done so far? Do you do this longhand or do you keep track of things another way?

8 Likes
#76

After reading this I started to think about how much strain I might be putting on my brain trying to contain all my fleeting thoughts for later retrieval.

I looked into this and ended up getting the eBook from my library. I need to be a lot more intentional with note taking (up to this point I’ve mostly used Filed Notes erratically). The hope is to quiet the perpetual thoughts of “I should be doing this other thing” and reduce the amount of abandoned To Do’s at the end of the day. To that end, I ended up picking up three notebooks to see what will work best for me.

Baron Fig Confidant Dot Grid in 5.4" x 7.7"
Midori MD Grid in A5
Leuchtturm1917 Dotted in A5

Wish me luck! (if you want)

I’m hoping to do this as part of the Bullet Journaling, so hopefully in a month or so I’ll have an answer for you.

2 Likes
#77

I don’t really keep any kind of table since the notebooks serves more as a timeline for me and I find it pretty easy to go back and find generally what I was thinking on when. I find when I have a new idea or thing I want to test the general idea is there and then a long string of questions to myself of what might or might not work and why. Sometimes I’ll write down answers or results, but not that often. Results, good or bad, seem to stick in my head much easier than the initial ideas or questions about what I wanted to try.

1 Like
#78

i write & draw A LOT (sometimes 300-400 pages/month), so fancy notebooks are pretty cost-prohibitive for me. i have a few flex hybrid notebinders from mead, which i fill with all-purpose white paper. when they’re full, i can easily file, scan, or reuse/recycle individual pages as necessary.

pen preference: uniball vision or pilot precise, black, extra fine.

bulletjournal definitely influenced my structure. i (usually) index (& always number pages), and i use the daily log + some of the bullet types when taking notes. i’m still working on modifying the system to…better fit my purposes. leaning toward using a larger binder with sections for things i need to track over longer periods of time.

4 Likes
#79

I even wrote a love song to my favourite brand.

1 Like
#80

I’m looking for a nice day to day journal pen and/or pencil. It is a gift, so I want it to feel like I tried and didn’t just grab some BIC ballpoints, I also don’t want to spend over $20.

My current ideas are

Blackwing Pearl Pencil
Parker Jotter Ballpoint
Pigma Micron of some sort.

2 Likes
#81

I don’t have experience with the pencil or ballpoint, but have that and several other Sakura Pigma pens. They’re good, reliable.

For pencils, I absolutely love these: https://fieldnotesbrand.com/products/no-2-woodgrain-pencil-6-pack

I find round much more comfortable to write with long-term than planed edges.

1 Like
#82

Do you notice a difference between the Pigma Micron and Pigma Micron PN?

#83

It strikes me the biggest difference is a slight variation in feel, where the PN is a bit smoother, and the regular nib at small sizes feels a bit stiffer going down. I’ve never done a side-by-side comparison though, I just tend to use whatever I find first, and in that regard, neither has caused me any grievance.