Magical Notebook

T.W.R. Shelton
Sep 15, 2015
2 min read

Greetings!

I've always had a real issue with dirtying notebooks. By that, I mean that when I open a new notebook, I expect myself to write neatly and avoid mistakes at all costs, because scratching out a line means that the page is ruined forever.

This is ridiculous, of course, but it's always been a point of anxiety for me.

A couple of days before I had the crazy dream that inspired Before a Million Universes, my mom and I made this notebook out of an old Peter Pan Little Golden Book. In my sleepy, nightmare-crazed state, it was the first thing I was able to grab to record my ideas. From that moment on, it seemed I was able to spend hours filling it with new ideas and scenes from the story. It didn't matter when I made mistakes; they were a part of the process. The scratched out lines stopped bothering me as much, and I found the unlined paper perfect for sketching out rough house plans and cartoons of how scenes would look. Basically, this is the first notebook ever that I wasn't afraid of destroying. It has been beaten up and well-loved, and I'm going to keep it forever.

I decided it could be interesting to include a couple of sketches from early on in my writing process.

Look at that horrible handwriting! This is an example of a first draft of Gran's house. It's loosely modeled off of my own Grandmother's house. I'm clearly no architect.