No one starts being good at anything: the bow screeches across the violin, a personal essay is littered with repetitive words and phrases, and an initial tower structure teeters wildly.

It is easy to skip ahead and daydream of being Great, caught on the roller-coaster of success and never wanting to come down from that high, because all that matters is that you are there, that you finally matter. Dreams can come true!

But we know that is just a dream, so we return to reality and make our resolute decision to practice or build habits. That is the grind or grit that has become highlighted over the past two decades. Yet, how can we tell if we are making progress or improving if all we are doing is keeping our nose down to the grindstone? If we are stuck looking at all the details in front of us, how can we expect to change or even adjust with the tides of life?

For me, the most profound decision I ever made was… a little black notebook.

A Little Black Notebook Away from Home

This all started from another major decision: to change schools. It was done out of desperation, all I wanted to do was have a chance to sit down and really learn without distraction. So I had to start all over again. Meet new people, learn the patterns of new teachers, make friends from fresh, most of whom already went through middle school together.

Outside of the old pecking order, I figured I could find my own niche. It was in the theater and music rooms where I met a curious figure.

One who always had a little black notebook in their back pocket. They happen to say a witty remark, they write it down. A thought that they needed to save for later, the notebook came out. What were they working on? A poem? A script? Homework?! What a mystery!

It was so perfect, one little black moleskin notebook with blank pages. It could fit any pocket in any season. How could such a small item make such a large impact in my life?

I Admit That I Copied the Homework

I copied them.

And I will never regret that.

Convenient, simple, purely blank, discrete – it is perfect.

There are no spirals to catch in bags nor flimsy covers that easily tear. There are no lines, no limits; you can sketch next to a note for a lunch meeting and a silly rhyme of an idea. It is not flashy, bedazzled, nor with an ornate engraving or overly flowery design. It just… is.

I can fight the impulse of “finding the right notebook” for the job. There is no requirement to share the notebook or show it off. It could exist and simply catch thoughts as they fell out. They could plant themselves into the pages, grow with offshoot ideas that grow into new forms, color added in as needed. You could turn the notebook to craft a spiraling poem, turning word by word into one final upright point.

Having just a perfect little notebook is freeing. And in that freedom comes that sweet, fleeting key to improving one’s writing.

Choose to Let Go of Judgement

These little notebooks have been my version of work-shopping. It is creative neutrality: nothing is ever good or bad, it’s just a possibility. You can certainly ask if you could make something better. But the point is to ask yourself, what is it that can be better? How can it be better? Is the sentence clunky or sound kinda off?

In creating your creative voice and personal style, every other opinion can modify it whither you want it to or not. To become completely objective is difficult. We all have our own biases so we need help seeing the work at a different angle.

This is the art of isolation.

Break the sentence or thought down into a microscopic level. Observe what is being shared. Ask what can be learned or implied by the information that is presented. Consider what you wanted to convey. Compare and contrast what you wanted against what is being presented. Experiment with the elements of the sentence or thought.

This notebook is your personal laboratory. It is impartial, nearly timeless. By approaching your writing with curiosity, you can develop your writing over time.

It’s More Than a Phase

There is no escaping the fact that time does need to pass. Overnight sensations are those who put in a lot of work (and possibly money) ahead of time. One does not simply stumble out of bed and then into paparazzi without something happening beforehand.

Writers have to scrap and piece themselves together over a quilted world of personal writings, blogs, collections of scripts and novels, persistent social media postings and so much more. Writing is a state of being, an action taken multiple times.

You are meant to ramble and struggle with words. That is how you find what makes you and your voice so unique. It is developed with experiences that you have over time.

Think about the joy you can feel when you pick up the wrong little black notebook, thinking it’s for this year, only to be transported back to high school or college or even eight years ago. Now that you are so far removed, you can see talent teasing out of the margins; footsteps that you made into a forest of philosophy that makes you cringe at first, but now see what had to change. Patterns emerge from your writing that make your mind just click – an epiphany that can be caught only if you get up fast enough to your notes to capture.

And when you do, you will see how far you have come.