Pam Alison Knits

Here it is: the “traveler’s notebook’, also known as the one stationery item I was absolutely sure I would never buy. In fact, my reaction to the one million and twenty-seven social media posts I have consumed about this system have elicited in me one very simple response: no thnks. To me it has always looked flappy, ungainly, and difficult to use. Oh, practical, I’ll give you that, but impossible nevertheless.

I can recall last year being rather impressed by a new manager who started in a team adjacent to my own (my role never fitted into anyone’s portfolio, so I considered myself to be adjacent to quite a few teams) and I saw her unpack an A5 traveler’s notebook on her first day. I commented on it when we went out on a “getting to know you” walk during her first week. It seemed to suit her perfectly, but I knew it was not for me.

Then, just recently, I was sitting at the bus stop and a man beside me was carrying a standard traveler’s notebook – a “proper” one from the actual Traveler’s Company, the Tokyo Edition with the decorated cover. I was impressed by the idea that you could forget about whether you have a suitable bag and just carry your notebook in your hand – which would work for at least part of the year here in semi-arid East Anglia. Yet, once again, I knew this particular format was not for me.

It’s hard for me to understand, therefore, why I was waiting patiently beside the Kayztyle stand at the London Pen Show this October, eager to look at all the delicious leather traveler’s notebook covers they were selling. Clearly the result of some sort of stationery narcotic pervading the Novotel exhibition rooms. Even so, I was only looking, assuaging some kind of intellectual curiousity if you like, perhaps willing myself to continue to be mildly unimpressed. Yet… those leathers! There were several that I could have been tempted by: a gorgeous berry shade in that two-tone marbling that some clever dyers achieve with leather, or crocodile embossed leather which is always stunning. But I was already enthralled by a glowing turquoise leather paired with a lemon interior and nothing else was going to distract me, so I hung on behind other people trying to make a choice until I could get close enough to examine the notebook. I want to say at that point I was going to walk away, reassured that the traveler’s notebook isn’t my thing, but I’d be lying – I was already deeply tempted. Then I saw the pricing. Honestly, these notebooks were so reasonably priced that you’d have to have a heart of stone to refuse them. Either that, or be utterly convinced that the format couldn’t work for you in a thousand million years.

This is where my long-held opinions started to unravel. To begin with, I tried out my fountain pen on the paper and it was really rather nice. A lot of traveler’s notebook refills use Tomoe River paper, excellent for ink, but too thin to work for me. These notebooks had a good thick paper with no bleedthrough or showthrough from my ink. Uh-oh. So then it was a matter of how floppy the leather cover would be because, as we know, I do like structure. Often these covers are a single sheet of leather, but here the additional lining made it quite a sturdy item. I really liked the feel of it in my hand, could imagine myself using it. We’re moving on to alarm bells now. Perhaps my biggest issue with the traveler’s notebook format has always been the elastic bands which hold the notebooks in place. My thinking was that these would not hold the notebooks evenly enough to keep everything aligned nicely – I would be forever wanting to adjust the way the inserts were sitting – and that they would be in the way when you wanted to use the notebooks. Yet when I held books from the display they didn’t seem fiddly at all, just kind-of nice.

Of course I bought one. I’ve been leap-frogging between different systems all year and trying yet another one just seemed like an unavoidable step. So I ended up parting with £40 for an A5-ish cover in the lovely turquoise and lemon containing three notebooks, one lined, one dot grid, one plain, plus a plastic folder with a ziplok pouch and card slots. I then shamelessly evangelised about them to poor, unsuspecting friends, although I think I pointed out that as yet I had no proof that it was a system I’d actually enjoy using.

Home again after a long, slow train journey during which there was some debate as to whether a section of the track was safe for us to cross, the order of the day was to work out how I might actually use these notebooks. I won’t deny that I’ve engineered so many different inserts for discs, rings, and even bound books over the past few months that another one was just par for the course. Same old same old. The inserts are A5 height and a little less than A5 width so, when the time comes, I think it’s highly likely I’ll replace them with inserts from the Stamford Notebook Company. Back to the set-up, though, and out came date stickers from Flying Tiger and Ryman, more decorative bits from DesigningLiedfe on Etsy, pens, ruler, all the paraphernalia you could wish for. Hours later I’d transformed the dot grid notebook into my diary for Quadrimester 3 (four months encompassing October 2026 to January 2027), with the left-hand page for the week and the right-hand page for notes. I decided to do a hard stop at the end of each month, even if it meant the left-hand page would be largely unused. Then the next 2-page spread would be a title page for the new month and an area to set goals, or note items relevant to the month but without specific dates. There were just enough pages at the back of the booklet to make future log pages for February to September 2027, essential as I already have plans as far ahead as June. As to the other inserts, I had already started using the lined notebook for general notes – what we used to call a rough book at school, a tradition I like to keep going. Then, just before going to a writing group session, I designated the blank book for this hobby. The setup was largely complete and that just leaves the problem of whether I’d actually use it.

So now it’s a week down the line, and what do I think? Well, I have a few very definite take-aways. First, I’m not a fan of the dot-grid; I knew I wasn’t, I haven’t changed my mind, I’m still not. It feels too busy when I write on it. That said, it isn’t as bad as all that – it isn’t unusable, it’s just less than ideal. The light blue ink I was originally using gets lost on the paper, and the dark blue ink I’ve moved on to feels a little too heavy. It’s a work in progress and the good thing is I’m only using it until the end of January then I get to choose something different, something more to my taste. I love the ability to be in charge of the period the diary covers and I don’t think I’d go back to a dated insert. Having the current quadrimester as the main focus of the insert feels good. I’ve long been a fan of the week-on-one-page with a “free” page facing it and in the A5 slim format this seems like a perfect amount of space to me. One idea that had been intriguing me was being able to slip just the diary out of the cover and put it into my shoulder bag when I want to travel light. I’ve done it a couple of times now and it is definitely working well.

The other insert I wasn’t sure about was the blank paper, but I found myself really enjoying this. When I got to writing group, I removed it from the cover, turned it to landscape orientation, and covered six sides over the course of two hours. This was so good that I’m going to use blank pages far more in the future. Who would have predicted that I’d adapt so easily after years of insisting on lined pages?

I’ve only taken the entire traveler’s notebook out and about once so far, but it worked so well that I don’t anticipate having any problems when I do want to take it with me. Mostly, it sits on my desk or with me on the settee where I jot down notes and add tasks to be done, sometimes even colour in the box to say I’ve completed them! I’m still in the honeymoon period and who knows if this is a system that will stick, but so far, so good. I’m happy that this was a good purchase and I’m keen to see how it gets incorporated into my life over the coming few months.

Yet what, I hear you ask, about all the other setups, the systems you’ve been faffing with all year? For now I’m going to put everything away in a suitcase and focus on using the traveler’s notebook. If I keep things to hand I get distracted and start thinking something else would be better than what I’ve got in front of me. I need to regain some clarity. When I get to the end of January I’ll assess everything and see what I think. In fact, this is a process I also need to follow to get some focus back in my creative writing. I keep letting myself get derailed by indecision over which software package is the best to do my writing in, and I never get anything written. That will never do. Perhaps, as with my planning, I need to set everything else aside and try a fresh approach just to see how it takes me.