- Feb
- 5
- 2010
blog post: moleskine addiction
5:29PM by Brandon McCormick | Cetagories: Uncategorized
The following is written by Brandon McCormick, Founder and Filmmaker of Whitestone Motion Pictures
I love Moleskine journals. In fact, I think I have an addiction to them.
I love buying them, tearing them open and making that first mark on the first page. Something ceremonious about it all.
However one day I realized I had a bigger problem than just continually buying these journals.
About eight months ago I was cleaning out my home office and I piled up all of my journals in one spot. I flipped them open hoping to find some old thoughts and scribblings, only to find most of them blank after a few pages.
That depressed me.
Every time I started a new journal, I would fill out a page or two on a good day, and then tuck it away and forget about it. I couldn’t even follow through and finish one single notebook.
Each time I began, the inevitable desire to start something new arose. I would buy a new notebook at the bookstore, not because I had ideas to fill it, but because I thought having that journal would make me feel creative. I had the equation flipped.
So I decided to make myself finish one entire Moleskine notebook to it’s last page. I couldn’t buy a new one until every page had ink. New notebooks called to me from the store shelves. “Buy us,” they would say, “and we will make you feel creative.”
When I finished my first notebook to the end I was euphoric. I showed my friends excitedly, but no one was really as impressed as I was.
How many unfinished journals do you have at your house or office? Go ahead and lay them out. Do they have a few pages, maybe even a quarter of the book filled, then drop into oblivion?
Now I organize different films into different notebooks. I storyboard in them and I write stories in them. Even though I have many notebooks around me, the promise to myself still stands. I don’t buy a new one with that project until that book is filled to the brim. It’s a strange satisfaction, one I would highly recommend.
Do you keep your thoughts in a notebook like this? Send us your coolest photo of your daydream notebooks and we’ll start a new flickr thread dedicated to the writing tools of the dreamers of the day. Send one or two photos to info@whitestonemotionpictures.com and we’ll post them at the end of the month.
February 11th, 2010 at 9:38 am
Funny enough, I just went through and found my old moleskines just a week or two ago, and have done the same *Must Finish* Goal for myself.
Getting Excited is the easy part, Finishing what you start is not.