Ne'er Too Many Notebooks!

a jaunt through my notebook ecosystem

me & my first Louise Carmen notebook

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I finally took the leap and decided to share my own constellation of notebooks after reading

Garth Greenwell

’s most recent post about his notebook family in his luminous Substack, To a Green Thought. (Subscribe! Read it! You can blame it on me if you don’t love it!) The cadre of notebooks I own and use isn't a permanent fixture, which is not so much because I don’t believe in static systems—after all, I think that had a static system, I’d waste much less money on constantly trying out and rotating through different brands of notebooks. It’s more that I believe in going with whatever I feel like using at the moment. I let my notebook practice evolve as I do, and what I'm sharing here represents the configuration that serves me best in this moment of my creative life.

First off: my deepest gratitude to Louise Carmen for crafting these exquisite, bespoke notebooks. Her work is currently having A Moment within the stationery community, by which I mean Louise is terrific with social media and TikTok is full of unboxing videos of these custom-made beauties, or so I’m told; I’ve never seen the TikTok videos, but I’ve watched, rapt, her Instagram videos of people coming to her Parisian shop and getting to customize their notebooks in person. Her notebooks follow the Traveler's Notebook philosophy, which uses an elastic system on the interior. (Paper Republic also uses this system.) The elastics allow for the fluid exchange of smaller notebooks, creating a modular approach for your particular interests.

I also keep an archival system at the ready. When I finish one of the interior notebooks, I can remove them and house them permanently in one of Louise Carmen's substantial felt archive notebooks, creating a physical storage unit for my creative evolution.

This first notebook—my inaugural Louise Carmen purchase!—belongs to their splatter collection. After only one month of constant use and careful leather conditioning, it’s already developed a rich patina; the notebooks’ ever-developing patina is heavily emphasized in the marketing. I had “STORIES” custom-embossed in gold at the bottom of the cover. Adorning it are a ring of beads that hold personal significance and a Miffy bag charm that reminds me to always remain at least a bit whimsical.

Within this splattered and weathered cover, I house my business notebook—the contents of which remain confidential—alongside my book of Birds & Other Drawings. Here, you'll find my Bird of the Day sketchbook, which is where I draw them before they land in my Substack Notes.