Lilty, for goodness sake don't spend a ton of money. Get a bunch of single-subject spiral notebooks. They're lightweight, and you don't feel like you have to write perfectly. You can screw up or rip out pages or make lists or get email addresses on odd pages without feeling guilty. I adore my spiral notebooks.

I have a nice husband. He's not only my plot consultant on this book - which deals extensively with the first love of my life, and nuff said about that in an open forum, because this one's locked down tight for the moment - he doesn't mind me wandering into the book and not emerging for five hours.

Nice man.

Which is a way of saying I should get off my arse and make a pasta sauce.

Not gonna. Not yet. Writing. Just up for air.

Oooooh! Van Halen! "Finish What You Started"!

I love spirals, too. I just get distracted by shiny things.

I hear you, Lilty. I have a stack of notebooks that I just enjoy for their own sake. They don't have to be filled with words or pictures to make me happy (in fact, there are a couple I dare not even start -- but I still love them).

I keep seeing these journals and occasionally buying one, then I can't write in them because I feel like something a bit more high-toned than slash fic and scrawled chunks of overheard conversations should go in them.

Loose-leaf or spiral for certain, though, because not being able to write to the edge of the page because of binding freaks.me.out. Plus it won't lay flat.

ita, I love notebooks. I just wouldn't shlep the fancy ones all over Europe, to write in.

Seriously. Spiral is way better for that.

I tend to start a whole lot of shite before I get to anything worth going on with, too. It's be a shame to tear up something so pretty.

semi-xposted with Literary:

It was just announced on my Regency writers' board that Zebra is discontinuing its traditional line--apparently one of the editors said so at an RWA chapter luncheon today. It doesn't really surprise me, but I honestly thought Signet would move first--they've been bringing out two Regencies per month to Zebra's four, and I've heard vague buzz that makes me feel like they're about to drop the line.

Traditional Regencies were the first romances I ever read, and I have a friend who just published her first and has another scheduled for the fall, plus two critique partners who are working on simply brilliant stories for the format. Though I saw this coming, I'm still sick on their behalf, because they're just so dang talented. I want them published almost as much as I want it for myself. So I'm wracking my brain for a way for them to sell the books without substantial alterations--so far I've thought of Harlequin Historicals/Mills & Boon (though they claim they don't publish Regencies, they do publish Regency-era, like a 70-90K word count, and seem more friendly to subtle sensuality), and two small presses that sell more traditional romances mostly to library markets, and that's it.

Sigh. End of an era. I'm selfishly very glad that I made a deliberate choice back when I was writing Lucy's story to go the nontraditional route, both because of my gut instinct about the market direction and because I don't think I could write a novel much under 100,000 words if my life depended on it.

I can see how the fancy ones might lend an air of formalcy or ritual to what you're doing -- I've gone both ways with sketchbooks. In the end, the moment and the product are your own.

Lilty, go spiralbound, but get the kind with a sturdy cover--I do all my longhand writing and note-taking in Mead Five Stars.