I carry two notebooks in my backpack. Well, I carry closer to five, with composition notebooks for different subjects, but I have two spiral bound notebooks. One has the boring stuff; history notes, math assignments, lyrics of songs that I have stuck in my head, reminders to myself... The other one, though, has the good stuff.
I call it my Covert Writing Notebook. (Yes. It has to be in that font.) I use my Covert Writing Notebook to combat Boredom. Like in Subject X, when my teacher has us mindlessly copying notes, I'll race ahead with my sloppy handwriting, and covertly switch notebooks to a fresh page in my Covert Writing Notebook and have at it.
Hey, as long as your pencil is moving, it's pretty easy to get away with.
Today I Wrote Covertly and got almost an entire page done. In cursive. (I'm training myself to write in cursive, because my print is so horrible. At least cursive looks neater by default.) It's a great way to kick-start a difficult scene. When you're sitting at home on the computer, with a million distractions--twitter, facebook, email, brownies--it's hard to concentrate on actually starting that scene. But once you're in class, with those distractions gone--what else would you do? Actually take notes? That's crazytalk--it becomes easier to come up with a great way to start. Then once you get home you just have to copy it into the computer, and you're already in the middle and ready to keep rolling.
Which is what I plan to do now. (Be quiet, Homework.)
[Note: I'm not necessarily advocating not paying attention...]
Kieryn
www.kierynnicolas.com
