Things I Treasure: My Notebooks.
My Notebook.
In 2008 I went around the world and a part of that journey was spent in Tacoma Washington, where I met up with a friend of mine from the internet and crashed at her dorm for three weeks(minus a weekend where I buggered off to Vancouver) while I was in Vancouver I sadly lost my notebook, in which I had been plotting out a story about Vampire hunters and building an obscene amount of mythology around blood storage and viral infection rates and all types of weird esoteric stuff.
To replace my notebook I went to the Campus store and bought myself a set of five tiny notebooks all of which were coloured differently, Red, Green, Blue, Black and Orange.
The Red one I used for the rest of my trip to take down the details of my hostels when I booked them online so I could have a slight hope of finding them when I got into some cities(this wasn't always the case in Sophia, Bulgaria I was wandering around the city for hours looking for my hostel before I finally worked it out thanks to a bouncer at a strip club/casino).
The Green book I used to plot out what I was going to do with every day I had ahead of me. I didn't follow this guide perfectly but I did use it to ensure that whenever I couldn't decide what I wanted to do that day I would always have a pre-established idea of where to go. I also always included a reference to my big fat Lonely Planet guide for each event/location so I'd be able to read up on it before I showed up. I'm amazed looking back on this how organised I was.
The Orange one I think I used to keep a track of my train times and planned exits from various cities. I ended up ignoring it and just using the green book for that for the most part.
The Blue Book I think I kept email addresses and phone numbers in case I lost my phone, which I ended up doing in Amsterdam.
And the Black Book was my most treasured book. It was the book I kept all my story ideas in and I've kept it for the last five years, slowly but surely writing some more into it every now and then and trying to finish up the stories within it. And it is the subject of todays Things I Treasure.
As you can see it has taken a bit of a beating. The top fancy looking notebook is its replacement, a birthday present from my neighbours.
The book itself has seen better days, it has been at the bottom of my bag since April 2008 and rarely have I gone anywhere without it, as a result the front cover has been torn off over time and the first page(with my first written story idea Memories of Tacoma(renamed 3 Weeks in Tacoma in the newer notebook)) has almost been lost. I remember sitting down to write out that idea and then figuring I'd never get around to writing it but feeling some sense of creative energy flowing through me after I wrote up the outline. This carried on for several months as I made my way across the globe. I had it with me when I was in Gallipoli(It was in a plastic bag just in case I got rained on) it was with me in Israel when I was starving during Holocaust Memorial day and trying to write an outline to an action thriller set in Berlin(it took four cities to finish the outline alone, I even made a note of it on the page). I used it to escape from long plane rides and train trips, to distract myself from the millions of underground metros I travelled through. I came up with bizzarre worlds and story ideas, a universe without friction and a universe where direct light affects gravity and the last private detective in the multiverse trying to find a missing person in them. Another story which I'm pretty sure is a rip off of the TV show Revolution(my story is better, yeah, I said it).
I wrote one outline while waiting in line at the Chinese Embassy in Moscow(Overboard, the story of a man on a spaceship who sees a body floating outside and tries to stop the ship to find it), it was a long line that day. That was also the day I had the best Kebab I've ever had in my life.
When I was travelling between Germany and Finland by boat I found an ensign working at a desk and asked her to pick a number between One and Fifteen(I had fifteen story ideas in the book at the time) she said Fourteen and as a result I started working on my first novel(Gold Metal, the depressing story of a guy who won a gold medal) I've still a very very long way to go on that story but I do hope to finish it this year and then edit it someday soon into something presentable. I've written it in stages, the first stage was written in Russia and is depressing and funny, the second stage was written in Cairns and is depressing and surreal, the last stage I hope to write it in Spain, which will hopefully be depressing and whatever mood I'm in when I get to writing it.
The Books together.
In the last year or so I nearly gave up the idea of writing anything and then I decided to take a short story writing class for University last year and remembered how much I love creating a world and then filling it with my stories. I was at the end of that class last year when BlogJune started up again and I decided to write up Short Story Saturday(which this year has been shifted to Sundays because I have more time to write on Sundays) and I finished "Another Day at a Time" my first and probably last ever romantic story. Just yesterday I wrote "Bad things come in threes" which was originally called Threepete and was my first ever horror story. I came up with original ideas for last years stories as well, but actually finishing a story in my little black book was something I'd been meaning to do for so long that I just never realised how easy it could be if I just sat down and did it. The story I want to do next week("The Quiet Young Ladies Guide to Multiple Personalities") stems from an idea I had in New York which I would have forgotten forever if I hadn't written it down.
But my book is sadly falling to pieces so I began the process of moving the content to a new, slightly better quality book to protect it and to ensure I don't lose the ideas I had when I was young, drunk and desperate to escape to a world I could create or sometimes to just go home in my mind. Five of the stories were set in Brisbane(although a few of them were vague enough outlines to be also considered Brisbane based if I wanted them to be, "Bad Things Come in Threes" is like that). And as I move each story across to their new home I notice that I'm adding things to the outlines I had thought of at some point or another in the last few years. A touch or a word here and there that changes a bland outline into an interesting hook. I've changed details I wouldn't have dreamt of doing once upon a time and have made some of my stories better.
I'm barely half-way done with transferring the book over, it shouldn't take as long as it has been but every time I finish a story I have to take a day or so off afterwards to think about the next one.
I shudder to think about how hard it will be to actually edit my own work when I finish Gold Metal considering how hard it has been to edit what little I've got written so far for my outlines.
The newer book was a present from my neighbours across the road. Its got a cotton leather protector/cover and it an absolutely beautiful book to write in. I've put my business car inside it so that if I ever somehow lose it I can at least hope to get it back. So far I've not let it out of my sight since my Birthday back in May, I look forward to adding to it going forward as soon as I finish what I've started so far. It looks kind of old fashioned and cool, which is nifty. My only complaint is that the cover and the book can be separated and I don't know where I could get a new book to use when the old one is filled up. I could probably find out if I tried I guess.
I treasure this little book more than I treasure almost any other book I own. Because it has been there with me through wind and storm, heat and flood and will one day useless when I finally finish writing the last story from it down. And when I'm done with it I'll burn it and start a new one that very day. Because the ideas never stop unless you let them.
My Day.
Where I spent a depressing amount of my day today.
I didn't really do much today. I spent the day at home catching up on MadMen and reading the news online. I started the day at Matts house and made him a quick breakfast of Sausage, Bacon, Tomato, Onion and Mushrooms before heading out the door myself. He didn't eat the Sausage which I found a bit weird.
I got home in a decent amount of time and found a note on the door for the postman saying that my mum was at the back of the house so if he needed her to sign for anything(she has her Passport coming in sometime this week) he'd need to knock really loudly for her.
I don't know why she thought it would be needed, the dogs would have probably raised hell if anyone came to the door, they still bark at me when I come home and I've lived there longer than they have.
Two of the Three dogs, the other one hates me so he refused to be in any photos.
I skipped lunch because all of the bread in the house was frozen solid and I just didn't have the energy to use the microwave, I then uploaded some pictures from yesterday to Flickr and re-edited yesterdays blog post. Sometimes in the afternoon I drove Matt back over to his house in my tiny car which has somehow managed to fix a formerly broken central locking mechanism which had been broken years ago. When we got there I got Matt some water, made sure all the house was still in once piece and then waited for Patrick to show up to do the night shift with me.
My brother doesn't need to have two people looking after him most nights but he does because eventually I will get a job and we'll need someone to cover the nights when I'm not available so having people on hand with experience has been essential for the last couple of years. This was also the system when I was at University, I'd rush home every night on the train and take over from his carer who would be on until 8pm most nights. For anyone who ever wondered why I would sometimes sprint out the door when class ended you may wonder no more.
So the three of us went out on the forty minute walk which we take every afternoon, its a pretty simple walking track overall, we have some decent hills and some good stretches of flattish bits. 4kms or so in total and it takes up about forty minutes. If its raining we go to Jindalee DFO and walk a circuit around the centre five times, which takes about forty minutes but I don't know how long the actual course is there.
Once we were finished I made a detailed shopping list for the coming week, which was basically a menu for the next few days so I would know what to cook each day, I've been doing this for the last couple of years and it has been remarkable because I don't have to worry so much about thinking up a meal plan every night, its sorted out on Monday night, the only night I don't have to cook a meal for myself or my brother. Because Monday night is steak night.
The Corinda Pub, O'Tooles, is a lovely pub situated right across the road from Matts old apartment complex and on Mondays they have $10 steaks and I've been going there now for about four years with Matt, the only time I stopped was back in 2011 when I had a class on Monday nights and couldn't make it. After we had our steaks, which I have to cut up for Matt because he can't use a knife and will hard swallow anything if it isn't cut up enough for him to chew on it, we left and went to Coles across the road to do the weekly shopping.
Now I worked at Woolies for almost a decade and I still don't really trust Coles when I shop there because they were always the enemy back when I was a team member. Now it was mostly in jest, because working minimum wage in a supermarket doesn't really motivate people to hate the competition as much as wanting the competition to win so they'd have to deal with more customers, but still I don't like the place that much. I think its the signage and the Masterchef bullshit around the place.
What made it worse was that I'd somehow, between Matts house, the Pub and the shops, lost my shopping list. So I had to go from memory to get everything. I'm pretty sure I haven't forgotten anything but watch this space for my insane attempts to cook around a missing ingredient sometime later this week.
Once we were done shopping I drove everyone back home and then drove to Woolies to buy the chicken because Woolies has chicken for three dollars cheaper per kilo and also has some other stuff I like more than the Coles stuff. I saw a 10kg bag of Rice on sale for $10 and am tempted to go back tomorrow and buy it, settle my Rice supply for the rest of the year but it wasn't Basmati Rice which is the only kind Matt is meant to have(not that he'll eat it because for some reason he hates rice). I also got some Subway for myself.
I then got home, sat down and started writing this about an hour ago. I took way longer than I expected to on this entry, mostly because I kept remembering details of my trip back from 2008 which always makes me write too much about too many things. Also I've found out recently that my internet quota on my phone is nearly done so I need to upload and get offline quickly from now on or it will cost me a fortune. This also means I won't have many pictures some days compared to others because I'm not wasting quota on Pictures if a thousand words will suffice.
Also, my friend Hilary said she couldn't finish my story because it was difficult for her to read, I probably should have mentioned it was a horror story from the start, but I was in a hurry last night and just wanted to finish it before midnight.
YouTube Video of the Day.
All Of Nation's Living Presidents Gather To Lie About Bush Presidency.
In 2008 I went around the world and a part of that journey was spent in Tacoma Washington, where I met up with a friend of mine from the internet and crashed at her dorm for three weeks(minus a weekend where I buggered off to Vancouver) while I was in Vancouver I sadly lost my notebook, in which I had been plotting out a story about Vampire hunters and building an obscene amount of mythology around blood storage and viral infection rates and all types of weird esoteric stuff.
To replace my notebook I went to the Campus store and bought myself a set of five tiny notebooks all of which were coloured differently, Red, Green, Blue, Black and Orange.
The Red one I used for the rest of my trip to take down the details of my hostels when I booked them online so I could have a slight hope of finding them when I got into some cities(this wasn't always the case in Sophia, Bulgaria I was wandering around the city for hours looking for my hostel before I finally worked it out thanks to a bouncer at a strip club/casino).
The Green book I used to plot out what I was going to do with every day I had ahead of me. I didn't follow this guide perfectly but I did use it to ensure that whenever I couldn't decide what I wanted to do that day I would always have a pre-established idea of where to go. I also always included a reference to my big fat Lonely Planet guide for each event/location so I'd be able to read up on it before I showed up. I'm amazed looking back on this how organised I was.
The Orange one I think I used to keep a track of my train times and planned exits from various cities. I ended up ignoring it and just using the green book for that for the most part.
The Blue Book I think I kept email addresses and phone numbers in case I lost my phone, which I ended up doing in Amsterdam.
And the Black Book was my most treasured book. It was the book I kept all my story ideas in and I've kept it for the last five years, slowly but surely writing some more into it every now and then and trying to finish up the stories within it. And it is the subject of todays Things I Treasure.
As you can see it has taken a bit of a beating. The top fancy looking notebook is its replacement, a birthday present from my neighbours.
The book itself has seen better days, it has been at the bottom of my bag since April 2008 and rarely have I gone anywhere without it, as a result the front cover has been torn off over time and the first page(with my first written story idea Memories of Tacoma(renamed 3 Weeks in Tacoma in the newer notebook)) has almost been lost. I remember sitting down to write out that idea and then figuring I'd never get around to writing it but feeling some sense of creative energy flowing through me after I wrote up the outline. This carried on for several months as I made my way across the globe. I had it with me when I was in Gallipoli(It was in a plastic bag just in case I got rained on) it was with me in Israel when I was starving during Holocaust Memorial day and trying to write an outline to an action thriller set in Berlin(it took four cities to finish the outline alone, I even made a note of it on the page). I used it to escape from long plane rides and train trips, to distract myself from the millions of underground metros I travelled through. I came up with bizzarre worlds and story ideas, a universe without friction and a universe where direct light affects gravity and the last private detective in the multiverse trying to find a missing person in them. Another story which I'm pretty sure is a rip off of the TV show Revolution(my story is better, yeah, I said it).
I wrote one outline while waiting in line at the Chinese Embassy in Moscow(Overboard, the story of a man on a spaceship who sees a body floating outside and tries to stop the ship to find it), it was a long line that day. That was also the day I had the best Kebab I've ever had in my life.
When I was travelling between Germany and Finland by boat I found an ensign working at a desk and asked her to pick a number between One and Fifteen(I had fifteen story ideas in the book at the time) she said Fourteen and as a result I started working on my first novel(Gold Metal, the depressing story of a guy who won a gold medal) I've still a very very long way to go on that story but I do hope to finish it this year and then edit it someday soon into something presentable. I've written it in stages, the first stage was written in Russia and is depressing and funny, the second stage was written in Cairns and is depressing and surreal, the last stage I hope to write it in Spain, which will hopefully be depressing and whatever mood I'm in when I get to writing it.
The Books together.
In the last year or so I nearly gave up the idea of writing anything and then I decided to take a short story writing class for University last year and remembered how much I love creating a world and then filling it with my stories. I was at the end of that class last year when BlogJune started up again and I decided to write up Short Story Saturday(which this year has been shifted to Sundays because I have more time to write on Sundays) and I finished "Another Day at a Time" my first and probably last ever romantic story. Just yesterday I wrote "Bad things come in threes" which was originally called Threepete and was my first ever horror story. I came up with original ideas for last years stories as well, but actually finishing a story in my little black book was something I'd been meaning to do for so long that I just never realised how easy it could be if I just sat down and did it. The story I want to do next week("The Quiet Young Ladies Guide to Multiple Personalities") stems from an idea I had in New York which I would have forgotten forever if I hadn't written it down.
But my book is sadly falling to pieces so I began the process of moving the content to a new, slightly better quality book to protect it and to ensure I don't lose the ideas I had when I was young, drunk and desperate to escape to a world I could create or sometimes to just go home in my mind. Five of the stories were set in Brisbane(although a few of them were vague enough outlines to be also considered Brisbane based if I wanted them to be, "Bad Things Come in Threes" is like that). And as I move each story across to their new home I notice that I'm adding things to the outlines I had thought of at some point or another in the last few years. A touch or a word here and there that changes a bland outline into an interesting hook. I've changed details I wouldn't have dreamt of doing once upon a time and have made some of my stories better.
I'm barely half-way done with transferring the book over, it shouldn't take as long as it has been but every time I finish a story I have to take a day or so off afterwards to think about the next one.
I shudder to think about how hard it will be to actually edit my own work when I finish Gold Metal considering how hard it has been to edit what little I've got written so far for my outlines.
The newer book was a present from my neighbours across the road. Its got a cotton leather protector/cover and it an absolutely beautiful book to write in. I've put my business car inside it so that if I ever somehow lose it I can at least hope to get it back. So far I've not let it out of my sight since my Birthday back in May, I look forward to adding to it going forward as soon as I finish what I've started so far. It looks kind of old fashioned and cool, which is nifty. My only complaint is that the cover and the book can be separated and I don't know where I could get a new book to use when the old one is filled up. I could probably find out if I tried I guess.
I treasure this little book more than I treasure almost any other book I own. Because it has been there with me through wind and storm, heat and flood and will one day useless when I finally finish writing the last story from it down. And when I'm done with it I'll burn it and start a new one that very day. Because the ideas never stop unless you let them.
My Day.
Where I spent a depressing amount of my day today.
I didn't really do much today. I spent the day at home catching up on MadMen and reading the news online. I started the day at Matts house and made him a quick breakfast of Sausage, Bacon, Tomato, Onion and Mushrooms before heading out the door myself. He didn't eat the Sausage which I found a bit weird.
I got home in a decent amount of time and found a note on the door for the postman saying that my mum was at the back of the house so if he needed her to sign for anything(she has her Passport coming in sometime this week) he'd need to knock really loudly for her.
I don't know why she thought it would be needed, the dogs would have probably raised hell if anyone came to the door, they still bark at me when I come home and I've lived there longer than they have.
Two of the Three dogs, the other one hates me so he refused to be in any photos.
I skipped lunch because all of the bread in the house was frozen solid and I just didn't have the energy to use the microwave, I then uploaded some pictures from yesterday to Flickr and re-edited yesterdays blog post. Sometimes in the afternoon I drove Matt back over to his house in my tiny car which has somehow managed to fix a formerly broken central locking mechanism which had been broken years ago. When we got there I got Matt some water, made sure all the house was still in once piece and then waited for Patrick to show up to do the night shift with me.
My brother doesn't need to have two people looking after him most nights but he does because eventually I will get a job and we'll need someone to cover the nights when I'm not available so having people on hand with experience has been essential for the last couple of years. This was also the system when I was at University, I'd rush home every night on the train and take over from his carer who would be on until 8pm most nights. For anyone who ever wondered why I would sometimes sprint out the door when class ended you may wonder no more.
So the three of us went out on the forty minute walk which we take every afternoon, its a pretty simple walking track overall, we have some decent hills and some good stretches of flattish bits. 4kms or so in total and it takes up about forty minutes. If its raining we go to Jindalee DFO and walk a circuit around the centre five times, which takes about forty minutes but I don't know how long the actual course is there.
Once we were finished I made a detailed shopping list for the coming week, which was basically a menu for the next few days so I would know what to cook each day, I've been doing this for the last couple of years and it has been remarkable because I don't have to worry so much about thinking up a meal plan every night, its sorted out on Monday night, the only night I don't have to cook a meal for myself or my brother. Because Monday night is steak night.
The Corinda Pub, O'Tooles, is a lovely pub situated right across the road from Matts old apartment complex and on Mondays they have $10 steaks and I've been going there now for about four years with Matt, the only time I stopped was back in 2011 when I had a class on Monday nights and couldn't make it. After we had our steaks, which I have to cut up for Matt because he can't use a knife and will hard swallow anything if it isn't cut up enough for him to chew on it, we left and went to Coles across the road to do the weekly shopping.
Now I worked at Woolies for almost a decade and I still don't really trust Coles when I shop there because they were always the enemy back when I was a team member. Now it was mostly in jest, because working minimum wage in a supermarket doesn't really motivate people to hate the competition as much as wanting the competition to win so they'd have to deal with more customers, but still I don't like the place that much. I think its the signage and the Masterchef bullshit around the place.
What made it worse was that I'd somehow, between Matts house, the Pub and the shops, lost my shopping list. So I had to go from memory to get everything. I'm pretty sure I haven't forgotten anything but watch this space for my insane attempts to cook around a missing ingredient sometime later this week.
Once we were done shopping I drove everyone back home and then drove to Woolies to buy the chicken because Woolies has chicken for three dollars cheaper per kilo and also has some other stuff I like more than the Coles stuff. I saw a 10kg bag of Rice on sale for $10 and am tempted to go back tomorrow and buy it, settle my Rice supply for the rest of the year but it wasn't Basmati Rice which is the only kind Matt is meant to have(not that he'll eat it because for some reason he hates rice). I also got some Subway for myself.
I then got home, sat down and started writing this about an hour ago. I took way longer than I expected to on this entry, mostly because I kept remembering details of my trip back from 2008 which always makes me write too much about too many things. Also I've found out recently that my internet quota on my phone is nearly done so I need to upload and get offline quickly from now on or it will cost me a fortune. This also means I won't have many pictures some days compared to others because I'm not wasting quota on Pictures if a thousand words will suffice.
Also, my friend Hilary said she couldn't finish my story because it was difficult for her to read, I probably should have mentioned it was a horror story from the start, but I was in a hurry last night and just wanted to finish it before midnight.
YouTube Video of the Day.
All Of Nation's Living Presidents Gather To Lie About Bush Presidency.
Click to view