It’s been a couple of months now since I finally unpacked every book I own into my amazing new bookshelves. My dream of having a room that looks like a library is now pretty much true (except that they’re not catalogued or anything, and there’s no woman in the corner telling me to be quiet).

One of the sections of these bookshelves (I’ll include a picture sometime – there are 48 square compartments to them) includes pretty much my entire collection of notebooks, both from travelling and general fiction scribbling notebooks I’ve kept over the years. Most of them are less than half full – I love pretty notebooks and tend to get all enthusiastic about writing in them until I find the next prettiest book. For me, the most exciting thing about having them all together there is that it actually does prove to me that I’ve always written. Sometimes I think – oh, in university I didn’t have time to write – but then, there’s a notebook covering that time.

My diaries are there too, and I was a consistent diary keeper during most of my teenager years (oh! the teenage angst!) and also while I lived overseas. And also the year I was eight years old, when I carefully kept a record of how the baby tomatoes in my backyard were growing.

The Lithuanian notebook and the story-within-a-story

So, let me get to the point. This morning I picked up three slim exercise books, each with a flimsy, pale green cover. Very cheap and nasty, but in an old-world kind of way. Two of them were absolutely blank, but one was quite exciting and I read it all in one sitting.

Starting from the front, there was the first story. It started off like this:

‘I bought this notebook in Lithuania for 4 cents.’ That’s what’s written on the cover of the notebook I found in my apartment when I moved to Japan. I can’t say I hesitated much before opening it – but I did feel a little guilty later.

Then turning to the back of the notebook (and turning it upside-down), the story-within-a-story starts:

Dear Reader, I hope you’re like me, and always read the first page of a book before you buy it. I don’t want you to spend your money on the basis of my slim fame and then be thoroughly disappointed in me. This book isn’t like my others. There aren’t any Prime Ministers or spies or movies stars in these pages. You’ll only find me, and my lover.

These two linked ideas have set my head spinning, and given me an amazing idea on how to rewrite my first novel draft! In fact, the story that follows about the narrator and her lover is outlined (by me, but it seems so distant that I need to use the passive voice) over the next page or two, and it’s a different story to my first novel, just with a similar setting. I’ll have to think about it more. But it’s all very exciting!

My plan is to gradually read through these notebooks and “mine” them for inspiration and ideas. If I get even a fraction of the inspiration from other notebooks as I did from this one, I’ll be more than pleased.

PS: In case you’re wondering, one part of the stories is true – I did buy these notebooks in Lithuania. The stamp on the back suggests they were bought in Vilnius, but they were first imported from Belarus. Cool. They also have a slogan: “Be yourself. Have a Credo of your own”. Fair enough.