Of course, I’d much prefer to be still at work teaching, and also able to get out of the house a bit more (although I don’t miss the supermarket too much!), but I’ve never for a moment felt like I could get bored. I’ve been trying to figure out if it’s just my personality type, and/or how much it is related to being a writer.

My current theory is that writers very rarely get bored. In my case, if I find myself in a boring situation, I find a way to make it interesting or useful for me. For example, last year I was “trapped” in a cinema having to watch a really bad, boring movie because it was part of a compulsory school excursion, and obviously the teacher can’t leave – but she can do something else! I had a notebook and pen in my bag (as always) and in the dim light coming from the movie screen, I made some notes about a story I was writing. Admittedly they were a bit difficult to read later, but thinking about that story stopped me from being bored.

Similarly, now that I’m home most of the time, I really can’t imagine getting bored. I have so many things I want to write, and on top of that, a million books I want to read. And that works out pretty well, because I need to make sure I don’t spend too long doing any one thing – I can’t sit, stand or lie down for long periods of time. Being forced to change tasks quite regularly is even better and keeps my writing fresh. And bored? I don’t have time to be bored.

So now I want to know what you think. Do you get bored? If you’re a writer, in particular, do you get bored less than other people? I’m curious. Please let me know in the comments.

First off, I’ve discovered yet another great use for waterproof notebooks for fiction writers. Or for any writers, I guess. Thanks to some lovely pregnancy-related dramas (pelvis problems and leg swelling, if you must know) I currently need to spend a fair bit of time in our swimming pool, but I’m not allowed to swim, in fact I just have to stand there in the middle (this photo’s an old one!).

This is not always too exciting, as you’d imagine, and I’d wondered what else I could do while I’m in the pool. And suddenly it hit me: waterproof notebook! Just recently in the pool I wrote several pages of notes for the planning stages of my new novella (more details on that soon). It makes my stay in the pool a lot more interesting and I love that I’m also getting something productive done at the same time. I highly recommend it to anyone – I really have a theory that being in water helps make you more creative, so try hopping into a pool or the ocean with your waterproof notebook next time you need some inspiration!

Second, I came across someone else who’d had the same idea as me, but unlike me, is making money out of it. Whereas my mother sourced my waterproof notebooks from a forestry supply shop, there is actually a company that is marketing their AquaNotes waterproof notebooks as being perfect for “shower thinkers”, just like myself. Smart work.

A while back I blogged about writers writing ideas down “anywhere”, including writing on pianos if necessary. And in that post I mentioned that I’d been trying to figure out how to deal with all the great ideas I come up with while in the shower, which seems to be the absolute best place for me to get inspirational brainwaves.

Well, my dear, wonderful mother read that post, and without mentioning it to me, she set to work to solve my problem. She’s obviously a bit cleverer than me, and figured out that waterproof notebooks exist, because there are plenty of professions where people need to take notes while out in the weather (less in the shower, perhaps!), and she set about finding one for me. With her supersleuth web skills she tracked them down at the slightly obscure Forestry Tools store in Sydney and ordered me a few.

I can definitely report that having a waterproof notebook in the shower is the perfect solution for capturing my writing brainstorms. And there’s something quite soothing (if not a little wasteful) about standing under a steady stream of hot water, scribbling my newest idea down. The notebooks themselves are quite amazing – even if they end up soaking wet, they dry out perfectly, and without erasing any of the pencil notes. And just knowing I have one sitting there has freed up my thinking in the shower – I used to stop my train of thought if I was on the track of a good idea, knowing I didn’t want to lose too much of the inspiration – now I can keep thinking and make notes whenever necessary. Thanks Mum!

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.