Are You A Pen-And-Paper Person?

Or do you go straight to the computer and start tp-tp-tptptp-ing away?

Me? I love a good notebook.

What is it about the chaos of keeping my ideas in barely legible writing across a million different notebooks that helps my creative process? As chaotic as the inside of my notebooks are, though, I do a pretty good job of remembering what I wrote in which notebook and wheresabout within those pages I made the jot. Sometimes I remember that I wrote something about something but I can’t find it, so I’ll look through the likely notebooks and a few unlikely ones five times with no success. Then I looks on my computer and find it in parenthesis in the middle of some bullet-point outline I typed up.

I appreciate my computer. I really do. But sometime it just throws me off.

I have a system.

My system works. (Mostly).

Usually, my projects only need one notebook each because my little spiraled friends are just for ideas, bits of dialogue, strokes of genius, etc. I’m not writing out entire, fully-rendered scenes in them. I save that business for Word, and the dialogue or quick description I’ve jotted down makes me feel like I’ve got a head start on whatever I’m sitting down to the computer write.

A big exception to the one project-one notebook trend is the novel I’m currently querying. That sucker stretched across many a notebook, and many a year.

The idea is one that had been incubating for a long time before I seriously sat down with a mind to make it to the end of a complete manuscript. (Previous incarnations of it include a pilot script for an animated series and a handful of comic book scripts.)

That’s another great thing about notebooks. I more often stumble across and decide to crack open an old notebook sitting on my shelf than I do an old Word document tucked away in my computer. It’s interesting to take a glance at some old dialogue or old character name or old character relationships from 5 or 10 years ago and remember the former lives of something that has come a long way since it’s inception.

And, my, has it come a long way.

Okay, enough about my super awesome notebooking habits. Here’s some stuff that’s almost as cool. Come. Geek out with me:

I’ve wondered about it. You’ve wondered about it. Here’s the answer to that age old question, what would Star Wars look like if Dr. Seuss had created it?

“You will sits and drinks my tea or I will eats you here and now!” – Uncle Werewolf from children’s graphic novel Ghostopolis (Doug TenNapel). You tell 'em, Uncle Werewolf!

What do you mean you haven’t gotten the new Strokes album yet? Have a listen. (Scroll down to the March 18 post.) Here’s one of my favorite tracks from Angles.

Aaaaand my other favorite…

2012, man? That’s how long I have to wait for the follow-up series from the creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender? WHY DO THEY HATE ME? WHY!?!?!

Well, at least the guys sat down for an interview earlier this month to let me know how things are going. (They do care *sniff*)

Also, Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, and Nathan Fillion in homemade, neon-bright superhero costumes? Heck yeah!

I repeat: Heck. Yeah!