My ideas are running low. I really need to do a brainstorm session. Find and invent new things to write about. I remember sitting at my work desk the other day, thinking, no overblown metaphor. Nothing blindingly obvious.
Possibly, this was an idea I had but – surprise, surprise, I forgot to write it down.
Anyway, to answer the Daily Prompt: I would commission from my personal sculptor a notebook.
It would be open, maybe open to a lined page half-covered with writing. The cover would be represented with some pretty sketch or a date, and tucked inside of the book’s spine would be a pen.
I realize it’s not so much a statue as a carving, a little decoration, but it’s what comes to mind when I think of the past twelve months. Twelve months ago, I had just graduated university. I’d gone on to search for a job, and my writing supplies remained faithfully by my side. Cheap little notebooks, thin and crumpled got more tatty as the time went on. I recorded jobs and ripped out pages at the slightest provocation.
My poetry notebooks – more beautiful than their sad little job-hunting counterparts – got softer-edged pages from all the times I ruffled pages. The spines cracked and became more flexible every time I opened one.
And to my mind, you can’t just have pen or paper. They’re a package deal.
I went on job interviews. I wrote short stories and poems, I revised for my licence and mapped out NaNoWriMo, finding a bit of paper and pen to scrawl an idea in the sudden of night. (At the most desperate I grabbed tissue box and Sharpy. I can only imagine what that might’ve looked like to someone else; it made perfect sense to me)
I did NaNoWriMo, and went on training-for-work things.
I always had a notebook and pen handy, ready to scrawl an idea in a cafe or curled up at home. If I was at home I never had to look far for either. I still carry both every day, stashed under my desk at work and shoved into handbags on weekends. If I’m going to be plotting all the things I’m plotting, I need a lot of paper.
So, that’s what represents the last year for me.
