Category: Writing

Moleskine Denim 12 Months 2019 Pocket Weekly Planner review

The Moleskine Denim 12 Months 2019 Pocket Weekly Planner arrived today, and it is a beauty.

I’m not a big planner user, but over the past year I’ve used a weekly planner just to get a better idea of how my week looks like and how to plan ahead accordingly. The slim, minimalist setup of the Moleskine Pocket Weekly planners is perfect for this.

Beyond the regular planner editions, Moleskine offers a wide variety of planners in their various limited edition designs (Harry Potter, Star Wars, Peanuts, Le Petit Prince and more), among them in their Denim collection, which is one of my favourites.

The covers are covered in Denim fabric, with jeans-like labels on them. The craft sleeve around the planner turns with a few minutes of work into bookmarks perfectly sized for the planner:

The endpapers are really nicely designed to evoke various denim labels, and the red elastic closure is echoed in the small back pocket:

As usual with Moleskine limited editions, it comes with a little something extra in the back pocket, this time stickers:

As for the internals, it’s the same as other Moleskine weekly planners, with a weekly schedule on the left side of the spread and a ruler page on the right, monthly calendars and information pages at the beginning of the planner, and a few general planning pages.

If you’re looking for a pocket weekly planner that’s beautiful, lightweight and not overly structured, I highly recommend this planner.

Quick update

  • I’ve started reading my 54th (!) book of the year, John Scalzi’s “The Collapsing Empire”. I’m not skim trading anything, it’s just that my newly acquired Kindle Paperwhite allows me to fill more empty time with reading.
  • Adding more strength workouts to my training schedule has made me appreciate yoga more.
  • I’ve played Matt Leacock’s “Forbidden Sky” cooperative board game and it is fantastic. I’ll post a review once I’ve run through it a few more times.

  • It’s still not raining here, which is worrying.
  • I’ve been back to writing every day, even if some days it’s only 200 words.

Keep at it, don’t let them get you down, you’re awesome! Swing for the fences.

Back to Writing and Using Scrivener Bookmarks

After a very long stint of editing and rewriting, I am back to writing daily again (no, not as part of NaNoWriMo).

I’ve learned a few things from my first time around, and now I’m just writing as much as I can as fast as I can. The goal at this point is to get things down, to have something to work with later as most of the work will happen in the first and second draft anyway. So long as the bones and most of the body are there, I’m fine. This means that I’m no longer sweating details like times, names of things and exact locations. I just highlight them and will work around them, leaving those decisions for a later draft, when I have a much better idea of what the story needs.

I’m also using Scrivener’s bookmarks from the start to document which characters, places and important objects appear in which chapter. I highly recommend that you do so, because it allows you to make significant changes in later drafts more easily. That’s how I changed the name of one of my main characters in my previous novel. Just add characters and places notes in different text notes under “Characters” and “Places”, and then using the Inspector, add an internal bookmark.

Field Notes: In and Out

It took me about a month and a half to finish this one. Out: Field Notes Coastal (beautiful edition, but the reticle grid is a bit too bold and noticeable for my taste). In: Three Missions (another winning edition from this year).

Typewriter instead of Twitter

Trying to replace Twitter with this, as it’s become an even worse time-sink-of-horror-and-cruelty. Banging my frustrations out on these keys is exhilarating.

Moleskine Looney Tunes Limited Edition Notebooks and a New Moleskine Two-Go

At almost the last minute of my trip to Paris I managed to sneak in a short visit to a Moleskine store, and was caught by surprise by their new Looney Tunes collection. I’m not a rabid Looney Tunes fan, but the Bugs and Wile E. Coyote were too well-designed to pass, and I’m curious enough about any limited edition that couples Tweety, drawing pencils and a sketchbook to give it a spin. These all obviously come with a Moleskine premium, but if you’re remotely into Looney Tunes, I’d recommend them.

I’ve only opened the Wile E. Coyote notebook at the moment, though I have seen the others open in the shop and they are as tremendously well designed as the Wile E. Coyote one is. The endpapers are so colourful and a lot of fun, and they work with the cover design so well.

It comes with stickers of course:

And a cute B-Side band:

Another pleasant surprise was a new cover colour to the Moleskine Two-Go editions, green. The Two-Go notebooks have thicker paper than regular Moleskines, and they’re smaller than large Moleskines, with one side of the page blank and the other side ruled. I use them as my reading journals, and highly recommend them, especially if you were at all fond of the Arts notebooks of Field Notes’s “Arts and Sciences“.

Third Draft Finished

I just finished the third draft of my novel! There’s another, short polishing round I need to do on a few sections that I added, and then I’ll start working on getting this in the hands of beta readers.

There were some massive plot holes that I had to fix and made for a challenging draft, but the overall narrative is so much better and tighter now, and my characters also grew in the process, so I’m very happy overall. It was totally worth the effort, though it was quite a slog to rewrite so much at this stage.

 

Which Notebooks I’m Currently Using

I love reading about how other people use their notebooks and pens/pencils, so I decided to take the time to list what I’m currently using and how:

  • Field Notes Front Page – used in landscape mode with a Blackwing 16.2 to take notes while I work through the third draft of my novel. Something about the format of this notebook appeals to me, especially in landscape mode. I ignore the lines completely (easy to do, since they’re so faint). Also works well while I’m typing, since it’s thin enough not to get in the way. I just put it below my keyboard, a pause to jot a quick note when I need to.
  • Field Notes Dime Novel – I use this as a catch-all and home to do list notebook, using whichever fountain pen I have inked at the moment.
  • Moleskine Star Wars Lightsaber Duel – used as my daily journal, coupled with a Ti Arto with a uni-ball Signo 0.5 gel refill (UMR-85) and a Scotch glue stick to paste bits and bobs in. I’ve been using this combo for about two years now (with different Moleskine lined notebooks), and I couldn’t be happier with it.
  • Moleskine Large Squared  – used as my “bullet journal” at work. I’ve simplified the bullet journal system (removed the calendars entirely) and it’s now a daily checklist + work journal that serves to answer two questions: what am I going to do today, and what have I actually done. Keeps me sane and happy, especially when outages derail my day. I use a Zebra G-301 pen with this that I bought in Atlanta in 2012, and it is still going strong. I go through about a refill every two months, so this isn’t the most economical of systems…
  • Moleskine pocket square reporter – a new one for me. I’m using it to keep a running food journal, using a Retro 51 tornado slim graphite filled with a parker gel refill.
  • Paper for Fountain Pens notebook – together with sheafs of Tomoe River paper, this is what I use for my writing notes, quick drafts, and when I’m working through plot holes. I use whatever fountain pen I have going at the time, usually two pens with two different inks, Neil Gaiman style.
  • Moleskine two-go – I’m using this as my reading journal. I log all the books I read here. Previously I used two Field Notes Arts notebooks, but I ran out of them, so I moved to this. Using a Karas Kustoms grey RenderK in this, coupled with a Caran d’Ache Bicolor pencil to highlight things, and whatever other pencil I have laying around, for extra notes.
  • Baron Fig Three Legged Jester Confidant – using this to track my resolutions for several years now. Used to be my daily journal.
  • Moleskine softcover squared pocket reporter – using this to keep track of story ideas. I write in it with whatever is on hand.

A large pile of notebooks

Narrative Trouble

Just discovered a giant plot hole that I somehow missed on my second draft. Now back to pen and paper to try to figure it out. At least I can use pens and ink and paper that I love…