Hey Tula!

Hey Tula: How do you organize your journals?
Well jeez, thanks for asking! I’m sure many of you will be riveted to learn that I have a complex and extremely low-tech system for organizing my paper stacks of thought. In an earlier letter I described my daily writing practice, which essentially consists of getting myself to sit and write for 30 mins every day BEFORE getting caught up in the myriad things. I sit on a little bench, with my tea next to me, and my notebook opened on a drawing board. After years of dalliances with different notebook types, I am now wedded to the Japanese Profolio OASIS, lightly lined (though I ignore the lines), with a pleasing smoothness of paper, and a spine that can bend all the way back, like a gymnast.

Once I have finished a journal, there are several steps I take to fully include it in my expanding archive, which is, basically, a shelf. I put the start and end dates (don’t forget the year!) on the cover of every notebook, and when one is completed, I make a label that I can affix to the spine to show where it lies in the chronology. (This might take several months to actually do…) I flip through the notebook looking for scrawled items of worth: drafts of poems, big events, book projects, zine ideas, etc. I jot simple abbreviations for those on the cover of that notebook, so I can easily find them later. THEN, I take the notebook to a xerox machine, and copy the pages I want to file elsewhere. Examples of my files include: Writing in Progress, Transcribe, Titles for Things, Overheard Statements, Possible Cartoons, Interviews…

And then, when this is all done, I put a big splotchy dot on the right corner of the notebook’s cover, so that I know it is complete. Ta-Dah.

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