Don't let the creative process of other writers distract you, or some advice on finding your own creative habits.

Recently I've found myself comparing my own habits to those of other writer's, and felt a bit depressed. Then I remind myself that our creativity is as unique as our handwriting. And mine is messy.

I want to talk about something very innocuous that can make me feel really quite stressed out, which is notebooks. Notebooks themselves are not stressful objects. In fact, to most of us, they are a rather lovely, relatively inexpensive objects which bring quite a lot of joy. After all, there’s nothing quite like the joy of the idea of opening a new notebook, is there?

I look at other writers who post about their notebook habits, especially those who keep well organised books with the date on the spine, and I often feel a bit depressed that my notes exist in scraps and fragments, on shopping lists and in the back of books I’m reading and in quite crazy text messages I send myself. They’d make no sense to anyone but me.

No, what I want to talk to you about is the low-level anxiety I feel when I see posts on here or social media about other writer’s notebook habits, and how they usually leave me feeling that I’m severely lacking an essential skill as a writer. And I want to use this anxiety of mine to think more broadly about the creative habits of other people, and what they teach us about our own creativity.

Because this knawing fear about my lack of notebooks has reminded me that, while learning about the habits of other people can be interesting and entertaining, it’s also really, really important to remember that the way your creativity manifests and flows and blocks and reflows agin, is your own, which is what makes it so beautiful. And equally, there is no special habit you can copy from someone else - such as a highly efficient notebook habit, or a certain time of the day to write, or a special place to write - which will then mean you, too, will have personal or career success, or a creative practice, like theirs. While this might seem a bit depressing - sorry to break it to you but there’s no silver bullet to becoming a best-selling writer, folks! - it’s actually incredibly liberating.

I wanted to write about this because I’ve noticed, alongside the proliferation of endless articles on here about how to become a Substack bestseller in three easy steps, an increasing number of writers posting about the way they use notebooks. Now, these articles are really compelling. It’s interesting - fascinating even - to see deep inside the writing habits of someone you admire. I was recently reading about a writer here in America who has 4-5 notebooks on the go at the same time - one for general scribbles and to-do notes, another for morning pages, another to track the progress on a new novel, another for journalling, and yet another as a day-to-day, written-before-lights-out diary. I was wide eyed with a kind of envy and admiration at the idea of this.

It was a generous, in-depth piece of writing, which I really enjoyed reading, alongside the comments where I noticed a lot of people, who were not best-selling novelists, as this writer was, rather diligently commenting they would try these habits with their own creativity, and stock up on multiple journals without delay. The implication was that with these habits mastered, success would surely follow.

This picture makes me look like I have a diligent and well organised notebook habit and I really don’t. But while this might work for other people, comparing my own habits to others is, like all forms of comparison, the thief of joy.

I was really interested to read these comments, and for a brief pause (very brief) I thought that I, too, should get myself down to a stationery shop and immediately buy myself half a dozen journals. Perhaps if I, too, tried this impressive notebook habit, I too, would sell half a million copies of my next book, as this writer had.

And then I paused.