The unexpected return of THE NOTEBOOK NOTIONS

 

I’ve written on several previous occasions about my notebook notions, ideas I scrawled in a series of spiral notebooks when I was a teenage wannabe-writer. I’ve shared some of my old notebook entries here, here, here, and here, among a few others.

Nowadays, I do almost all of my writing on my computer, either in Blogger or as a Word document. I’ve begun writing this blog piece in Blogger on my iPhone. I do still keep notebooks handy, and I still use them as a place to jot down notions, as whim dictates.

But it’s very unusual for me to write out, by hand, a complete draft in my notebook. I don’t think I’ve done that much at all since I was in my teens, and I usually typed things out even then. But I did it twice this weekend.

The first of these two pieces was a Greatest Record Ever Made! essay about the Plimsouls’ power pop classic “A Million Miles Away.” That needs some work, but the basics are there and I expect to polish it and post it within a day or two. I originally wanted to include a chapter about this song in my book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1), but couldn’t get a handle on what I wanted to say…until I started scribbling in my notebook this weekend. If I do a Volume 2 of the GREM! book, this will likely be included.

The other piece was another entry in my Copperhead Kid series of short stories about a generations-spanning family of adventure heroes. I started this particular story, “Bullets From The Copperhead Detective,” a year or two ago, but set it aside after completing only a few paragraphs. On a sudden flight of fancy Monday morning, without even looking at those initial paragraphs, I picked up the story and finished it in my notebook. It needs, I think, only a minor tweak before I submit it to AHOY Comics for consideration.

I returned very recently to daily blogging to force me to get back into writing more often and more productively. The notebook is an additional means to that end. I have a notion that I’m going to be doing more of that.

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My new book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) is now available, and you can order an autographed copy here. You can still get my previous book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones from publisher Rare Bird Books, OR an autographed copy here. If you like the books, please consider leaving a rating and/or review at the usual online resources.

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, streaming at SPARK stream and on the Radio Garden app as WESTCOTT RADIO. Recent shows are archived at Westcott Radio. You can read about our history here.