Vid of the Week: Neil Gaiman talks about buttons and how they are not scary at all. Even though people with button eyes are totally creepy. Actually a small advert for the movie Coraline, but it is very effective. [link]

Link of the Week: The blog of one of my favorite writers, Lynn Flewelling; tea fanatic, fantasy writer, and fun person. [link]

I’m at home with bronchitis, which kept me from going to the Write-In at the local library. *sob* But life goes on. I’m still writing, doing laundry, and reading blogs. But at Target, while waiting for my prescription, I realized a guilty pleasure of mine.

As much as I like browsing through a bookstore, I love browsing through the journal section just as much. Hundreds of blank books, defined not by their contents, but by their material. Recycled paper, velum, leather covers, plush pink fabric with buttons. I pick up a blank journal and the cover makes me think about the things I could put in it, the potential.

For the pocket-small brown moleskine, 70 pages lined, I’ll write quotes that I’ve made up myself, bits of poignant genius or god-like insight that makes me seem a little more crazy, or a little smarter, than the sum of me.

The 7x10 graph paper, with lizard-like purple cover, I’ll write a story of an expedition on a different world, with diagrams and pictures of the fauna and diverse creatures with gapping mouths.

The art deco floral pattern, with butterflies on a pearl finish, I’ll fill with the life of a girl going mad because her dreams form into pearls in her mouth, making her choke as she awakes each morning.

The recycled chipboard, with grey tinged lined paper, I will dictate the slowly growing sentience of trees, and how they become first horrified at their abuse, and then enraged into murderous action.

Japanese sewn, with the painting of koi fish, I will document the double life of a blood-soaked Samurai who suffers from split personality syndrome. Court poet and artist by day, mercenary by night.

Matte soft board, with metallic overlay made to look like stained glass, will be the life of a fallen angel whose trials drives it to cannibalism, a penchant for collecting things that are yellow, and writing poetry about the night sky it misses flying in.

Matte finish renaissance paintings, pearl-finished floral patterns, paisley, stripes, black flocked skulls on a cream wood cover.

Even blank, notebooks prompt a style or idea for the writer. I like the idea of writing out a short story in one go, in pen. A continuous thread of creation, like Neil Gaiman with his first draft of Stardust. Maybe that’s why I do most of my writing in the keyboard or leftover spiral notebooks from school days; I have enough ideas that more would just confuse me. But I still love looking at blank books and thinking of ways to fill them.