I have a very vivid memory of my thirteenth birthday. It was an overcast day and the living room in our house in Kirksville, MO was dark. I remember that clearly though I can’t remember who I’d invited to my party. I know who must have been there, but I can’t see them in the scene. I see the oriental carpet on the floor, the dark wood of the antique dining room chairs whose backs always used to break if you put any weight against them. I remember what my father gave me.
On my thirteenth birthday, my dad – my wonderful, supportive, amazing father – gave me my first Moleskine journal. I’d had journals before, but nothing like this. My other journals were childish, with fairies and sparkles on the covers. This new one was sleek and black leather. It smelled so literary, so official, so grown-up. But my father gave me more than just a notebook that day; he gave me his approval and support.
When I was eleven, I decided I was going to be a novelist. That’s when I started writing in earnest, working on my first book which was a cross between a Tamora Pierce book and The Chronicles of Narnia. I think I wrote about 75 pages of that book. I still have it, lining my desk drawer. Of course, how many eleven-year-olds actually know what they want to do with the rest of their lives? My parents recognized my passion, they were supportive of it, but I don’t think they took it very seriously at first. And then my dad gave me my first Moleskine.
That notebook is one of my most precious possessions, not only because of what it represents in my memory but because of what it actually contains. On those pages I wrote the lyrics to my first song (a protest song against organized religion and George W. Bush). I wrote poems of first love and first heartbreak. I recorded the scores from family games of gin rummy. There are shopping lists and packing lists and the emails of girls I met at summer camp.
The spine is bound with clear packing tape now – it split because I used to store my pencil in side. The elastic band that holds the cover shut is shot. The book mark is gone. I can’t remember what happened to it now. The pages are long since filled. I’m on my nineteenth Moleskine now and that too is almost full. The filled notebooks sit in a stack on my desk. I recently labeled them, some day I mean to index them, because those thousands of hand-written pages hold the seeds to novels I mean to write someday when it is time for them to grow.
Thank you for reading and please remember to check out our Kickstarter page and back us if you can. Every little bit counts, but the band doesn’t get any of the funding if we don’t meet our goal by February 14th.
Leave a Reply