If you are anything like me, your bookshelf is filled with blank notebooks. You’ve got the purple glittery diary you received from your aunt for your eighth birthday, the smooth leather journal your parents gave you for your high school graduation, and the weighty A4 notebook you purchased in Argentina, intending to begin your sure-to-be bestselling novel.
Yet somehow, when you are suddenly inspired — by an important life event, a good book, or this scintillating article on the virtues of journaling — to write something down, none of the journals that you already have seems quite right. Which is both how you come to have such a large collection of blank notebooks in the first place and how you end up searching, once more, for the perfect journal.
The first thing you need to know, my dearest queer diarists, is that the secret to finding the perfect journal is accepting that, ultimately, journaling is not about the journal. The most glorious notebooks on earth will do you no good if you do not fill it with beautiful words and truths and dreams and secrets. And if you have those beautiful words and truths and dreams and secrets, you could write them on a paper napkin and have them mean just as much.
However, all that doesn’t mean that it isn’t totally worth it to Etsy it up in search of a glorious notebook in which to inscribe your deepest and most secret thoughts—on the contrary! At the very least, your chances of not losing a lovely notebook are much higher than your chances of not losing a paper napkin that you scribbled on and then threw into your backpack underneath your running shoes and the complete poems of Adrienne Rich.
The following are a list of factors to consider in the quest for the perfect journal:
1. Size
My preferred journal is less than half the size of a normal piece of paper; however, this is a highly personal preference that has much to do with my collection of awkwardly little purses and freakishly small handwriting. Consider your own needs: Do you long to create life-sized sketches of your cats? Do you need to carry your journal in a waterproof sack to protect it while you snorkel?
Unless you are a shockingly prolific writer (or you have excessively large handwriting), I would advise a slimmer notebook, at least for starting off. The satisfaction of finishing off one journal and getting to pick out another is immense, and if you start off with some kind of massive tome, you may not get to go notebook shopping again for eons.
2. Contents
For most journals, this is a simple choice between lines, blank pages, and maybe graph paper. And if you can’t choose just one? You can order a special custom notebook that allows you to specify a certain ratio of lines to blanks to graph paper!
3. Form Factor
I’m not entirely sure what “form factor” means, but I really like alliteration, so I am just going to go with it. What I am talking about here are things like the hoo-ha (not that kind!) that loops around the front cover to close your journal or whether or not the notebook of your choice stays open while you write or tries to devour your hand like some kind of snapping turtle.
4. Design
This is the fun part of journal shopping, where you get to choose whether you want your journal to be covered with cute hand-embroidered owls, hip letterpress bicycles, or punky studded leather. Must you have gold-edged pages? A front cover carved out of a fallen tree? As always, my friends, you do you.
If, in the process of doing you, you would like some sources of inspiration, well, the images above feature some of my favorite models from across the wild wild web—including one particularly fine notebook designed by your good friends right here at Autostraddle! If you’re broke, don’t worry. A notebook-making post is coming soon!
You know that whole pen is mightier than the sword thing? It’s true! So why not go forth and fill all the tiny notebooks in the world with our thoughts/feelings/dreams/doodles? Tell us your favorite reasons for journaling in the comments! Where’d you get your notebook?
Maggie is a queer twenty-something who considers herself a connoisseur of quick breads, wedding blogs, and epistolary novels. Her life ambition is to save the U.S. Postal Service.
