Writing and Late Summer Discipline

It’s been a pretty long summer and I’m already starting to look forward to the discipline and structure of the academic year. I’m hoping that the “frog days of summer” can serve as a springboard for the new academic year by motivating me to get my priorities set and develop some new (and hopefully good) habits before the reading and writing season gives way to teaching and meetings.

There is one habit that I’m already struggling to establish. Last spring, I admired Tom Isern’s commitment to writing in his notebook and watched Richard Rothaus and Kostis Kourelis do the same thing this summer. There was a time several years ago when I almost got into a notebook habit. In fact, I filled a few notebooks and even now rarely go anywhere without one in my bag. 

Last week, I purchased a couple new notebooks and a gaggle of new pens. I have a tradition of buying a new notebook and new pens at the start of the school year. This year, I bought a Leuchtturm 1917 notebook (in the A5 size) and a Paperage lined journal. So far, the Leuchtturm has been a lovely notebook to use.

To write, I’ve decided to try some fountain pens. I’ve never been a pen nerd, in particular. I’ve generally enjoyed writing with Zebra Z-Grip ballpoint pens. They’re comfortable, reliable, and most importantly work on normal paper and Rite in the Rain field notebooks. I decided that my new journaling habit would benefit from some new journaling pens. Staying the Zebra family, I got a pack of Zebra Fuente fountain pens, Pilot Varsity pens (which is the budget version of their venerable Metropolitan beginner pen), and a single Platinum Preppy (medium). The new notebooks and pens should help motivate me to write. 

In my notebook writing prime, I kept a pretty detailed teaching notebook where I would scrawl down observations about my classes. I did this at least weekly and in many cases more often. I would then start the next semester by reviewing my teaching notes. Two decades ago, I used notebooks fairly regularly to take notes on my academic reading. Since then, I’ve largely switched to a series of digital applications, most recent Obsidian, which serve as scratch pads for informal academic writing, note taking, and email composition. I’m also experimenting with integrating AI writing aids into some of my workflows (especially Elephas) which integrate nicely with my digital scratch pads. In other words, I suspect my paper notebooks will never go back to housing my research notes.

(That said, I’m interested in experimenting with using AI to transcribe my notebooks. I’ve never tried this before, but I suspect with a bit of training and patience, I could get an AI to do this consistently).

I currently plan to use my paper notebooks to write fragments. These are things that aren’t even substantial enough for blog posts, but get stuck in my head. Mostly these evaporate before ever seeing the light of day, but maybe they deserve to be written down. I’m going to start with trying to write three days per week in my new notebook and maybe à la Tom Isern, I’ll share some of my notebook entries here on the ole blog.

Stay tuned.