Tools Of The Trade (On Sale), Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 2009, all photos © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Back-to-school sales are a bonus for writers. Liz came home last night with presents in tow: three full-sized college ruled notebooks for Writing Practice and five colorful 4 1/2 by 3 1/4 Composition notebooks with marble covers (my favorite for carrying around in my pocket). The large notebooks were a penny less than 4 bits; the small ones only 19 cents. (Hint: a bit is 12.5 cents; 2 bits is a quarter.)
Last night I put the small red Composition notebook by my bed. It came in handy when I woke up at 3 a.m. with insomnia. I grabbed it and wrote down these haiku (senryu) floating around in my head. I had hoped the rhythmic counting would help me get back to sleep:
Insomnia haiku (II)
_____________
crumpled white paper
word remembrances of love
regurgitation
10 sleepless monsters
rambling around in my head
flat Insomnia
beyond Milky Way
a random act of kindness
what it takes to love
I hope everyone is taking advantage of the back-to-school sales to stock up on writing supplies. Paper products are our Tools of the Trade. What kind of notebooks and pens do you love? Where can we get the best deals?
-posted on red Ravine, Thursday, August 13th, 2009
-related to posts: WRITING TOPIC – TOOLS OF THE TRADE, haiku 2 (one-a-day)
I always get a bunch of notebooks and ink pens for myself during back to school time. Actually, I get them after wards when they are on clearance. I get enough to last me the whole year and a few extras because there is always someone that needs a notebook or a pen.
My personal favorites are the (Mead) Composition Books with 100 pages (not so many that it takes years to fill and not so few that you need a new one every week). They’re are about 9 X 7 inches which is a great tote bag or purse size and the page can be folded back so it lies flat (as they are not spiral bound). Sometimes I leave them the way they are on the cover but I particularly like to fill them with stickers or some kind of collage work.
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Those are some great prices on the notebooks and composition books! My oldest daughter and I went school supply shopping the weekend before I left town, and the composition books we bought weren’t that cheap but they came in the coolest colors. Magenta, lime green, school bus orange, to name a few. We found them at Target.
Corina, this summer my girls collaged quite a few composition books, cutting out pictures and words from magazines and then using Modge Podge (sp?) to dry clear. And you’re right about the size…prefect for totes.
I got a new Mead notebook with a sort of plastic red cover. I liked that the cover looked like it would last. It’s been fun doing some writing in my notebook since I’ve been in Vietnam, esp because one of my colleagues gave me a super fast writing pen. 8)
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I always feel like I can start again (as a writer) when I have new paper. The covers haven’t been crumpled, the wire isn’t bent, there isn’t a water glass stain.
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We thought we would have Brant through Saturday, but yesterday was his last day here for the summer before school. I took him shopping for supplies & he made out very well! It is a time when I usually pick up the supplies I need also. (notebooks, pens, highlighters, etc.) I like Top Flight standard notebooks for writing. Thanks to a great sale many months ago at a thrift shop on brand new ones someone had donated, I was able to pick up about 10 in different colors for 25 cents each, so I still have a few on hand, though I use them often.
Like yb, I also like the plastic covered ones, especially when I am away from home. I use a canvas tote bag as anything that finds it way into my purse tends to get worn out too quickly.
I like Corina’s method of hitting the clearance sales after the hoopla over. D
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For me, there was no better way to start off a new school than with a bouquet of freshly-sharpened pencils. I love school supplies; I always will. I can’t help but feel like Fall is approaching whenever I walk into an office supply store; the scent of paper hits me quick and I just want to grab a new backpack and stuff it with new crayons, notebooks, and gel pens!
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QM, your photo and this post just made me smile. This little bubble of excitement rose in me … it was not sentimentality for back to school shopping … it was the thrill at the thought of buying a new writing notebook! Thanks for sharing your joy.
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Thanks to all who have stopped by this post (and red Ravine) the last few days. I’m a little behind in comments but will catch up tonight! ybonesy is on her way back from Vietnam. Liz and I are thinking about driving out to the Minnesota Garlic Festival (LINK). Totally spontaneous gesture. Will keep you posted!
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Corina, I loved the collage idea. I recently visited a friend’s painting studio and she showed me her sketchbook — it was filled with all kinds of collage, drawings from magazines, photographs of architecture that she loved. It really made me want to start a book like that again.
Curious, too, that you like the pages that lay flat as opposed to the spiral bound notebooks. My sketchbooks always did NOT have spirals. But my writing notebooks do have them. One odd thing — I never write on the backs of pages. I know a lot of people might find that wasteful. But I don’t like writing on page backs at all. I like the freshness of a front open page. ( I also use Sharpies which tend to bleed through the pages!).
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Teri, I laughed at the water glass stain. 8)
ybonesy, what kind of super fast writing pen were you using in Vietnam? You know I love my Sharpies. But Liz has this pen, a Sanford Liquid Expresso Extra Fine Line Pen in navy blue that I’ve confiscated from her and refuse to give back. That’s my pen of choice right now.
Scaramastra, I love freshly sharpened pencils, too. I have been working on a project lately that involves using a pencil. So I’ve had a little truck sharpener sitting beside me for the last few weeks. It captures the pencil shavings in the truck bed. 8)
breathepeace, that bubble of excitement, I get it every time I walk into the new school supply section of any store. I sometimes miss this red plaid book bag I had as a kid. It had buckles for closures. You still see them sometimes. A fresh notebook though — that’s a thrill that never goes away.
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Pens and notebooks that’s all I need. I love back to school sales just for that reason. And dollar stores. And the fancy dancy notebooks I get on sale (that’s a real thrill). Trouble is, now I have a slew of notebooks waiting to be filled. I can’t buy anymore. Ok, maybe one more….
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diddy, 10 notebooks in different colors for 25 cents each? What a steal. So is Brant back in school now with all his new school supplies? Hope it’s not too much of a shock!
Lindsay, Dollar stores are a great resource for pens and notebooks. Liz found a dollar store not far from us that we both really like. In fact, I was thinking of going there today for new dishwasher tabs.
You bring up a good point about having a ton of new notebooks, waiting to be filled. I sometimes set aside different colored notebook covers for different items I’m working on (red for red Ravine, blue for writing practice, green to track money and time, orange for art projects) and then forget where I put them all. Or end up with a notebook half-filled.
I try to make myself fill them all the way to the end. But I do have a few old sketchbooks that have blank pages at the end. I don’t want to fill them in with new stuff against all the old work. Dilemma. Thanks for stopping by!
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QM, Brant is on vacation this week. I’m not sure when his school starts. I thought it was the 26th, but that’s our school district.
We made his last day here as much fun for him as possible. He was excited to shop for school supples. He got pens, pencils, pencil box, rulers, doodle pad, etc… & even took a few things from here to share with his younger siblings.
The transition from summer with his Daddy & going back to his Mom’s house was weighing heavily on him. We had a special dinner for him & A.. He ate his first carbcake ever & loved it! As his Daddy was backing out the driveway, Brant was yelling, “I love you, I’ll miss you.” I found tears streaming down my cheeks & the house seems empty without him. Abbey is the most distraught. She looks for him every day. D
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[…] Here are a few other fun facts that were read aloud at Lake Harriet before the film rolled. (I jotted them down in one of my new pocket notebooks): […]
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I can do writing practice on anything, anytime and share the addiction to Back-to-School sales. But, for journaling I’ve become addicted to making my own blank books. I use legal size paper, folded precisely in half. I stack those, clamp them tightly between two wooden paint stirrers, and coat them liberally with white glue. By dissecting a couple of old hardback books, I’ve derived a reasonable method for making hard covers — my most recent choice is the faces of wine boxes (my wine snob daughter cringes when I publicly admit to drinking box wine, LOL). Right now I’m about to launch into my latest. I made it from recycled packing paper — lovely brown light-weight sheets that were lightly crumpled and pressed nice and flat. The sheets were 30″ wide, and each perfed panel was 8.5, so trimmed in half, each was just a smidgen wider than my standard. I covered it with walnut-stained grocery bag paper and decoupaged a pressed fern. Three glass beads on a jute bookmark strand complete this volume. I’m pondering a pen choice, balancing pen against my favorite TUL mechanical pencil.
Rather suprisingly, I do dare write candidly and freely, in these volumes, though there are a few times when I defer to a more disposable medium.
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Sharon, how wonderful that you take the time to make your own writing journals. And the process and details you share are wonderful. So creative. It must feel really rewarding to fill up one of these handmade journals with your writing and set it aside on a shelf when you are done. It will be your personal legacy to your writing. I was curious about how long it takes you to make each journal. If you come back to this post, maybe you can let us know. And do you sell them anywhere? Or are they just for personal use. Love the wine box covers, too. Do you sketch in these books as well?
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I’m excited (again) because I got a coupon in my email today for a buy one, get one free pack of Sharpies, my writing tool of choice! BTW, Sharpie has a retractable pen now. I haven’t tried it yet but Liz just told me about it. Here’s a link: Sharpie Pen Retractable (LINK). Anyone tried them out? They are supposed to not bleed through the paper. But I have to see if they have the same felt-tip feel of the original Fine Point Sharpie.
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I’ve tried the retractable Sharpie, QM, and I liked it fine. But I still remember it bleeding just enough that I couldn’t really use the back side of the paper. Maybe only bled on the stops, but even without bleeding, a pen can leave a heavy line, such that you can see it through the paper. Some ballpoints, too, if you push too hard, leave their mark on the backside.
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[…] your kid her own notebook and fast-writing pen, and encourage her to write on her own in this same way whenever she feels […]
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[…] journals: Ask everyone to bring a composition book, and then do collage, stamping, and doodling or painting in […]
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