A SAD FAREWELL TO THE MAGIC NOTEBOOK

There’s a famous scene from classic comedy series I’m Alan Partridge, where Alan goes to the BBC in London to see if he’s got a second series of his chat show. When told that he hasn’t, he reels off a list of ideas for alternative shows – arm wrestling with Chas 'n Dave, youth hostelling with Chris Eubank, monkey tennis – one idea more preposterous and desperate-sounding than the last. But an idea nonetheless. And I put it like that because, like every writer, I carry around a notebook with me to scribble down my own ideas, any bolt of inspiration that might strike me at any given time.

My current notebook is coming to the end of its life, is getting full up, close to its final page. A sad thing. Today, I flicked through the pages from start to finish and looked over some of the ideas I felt worthy of committing to paper over the last few years, and had what I could only describe as a pure Alan Partridge moment. I couldn’t quite believe some of the truly embarrassing, cringe-worthy, ridiculous things I’d jotted down (more often or not in the middle of the night or early hours of the morning), things like:

Idea for novel – man with suspected ingrowing toenail is in fact being transformed into an Indian deity.

Idea for title: Columbine Karaoke

Another idea for title: Did the Marlboro Man Really Die of Cancer?

Or fragments of what I have no idea, of why I wrote them, what was going through my head at the time, what they actually related to in the first place:

Every individual event in life is a prism of ambiguity, open for interpretation or misinterpretation (two sides to every story being indicative of the prism itself) because clearly, events are not only seen from a single point of view or narrated in the first or third person (to use literary terminology), there are innumerable points of view and interpretation.

Or:

There are cultural and social factors underpinning the overriding theme of the book (what book! Who, where, why?)

Or:

When I said I didn’t know her, I didn’t mean that we hadn’t met before

Or:

How long do you stare into the bowl after flushing the toilet?

a) 10 seconds
b) 10 minutes
c) Until you're ready to take another shit

But every so often, I stumbled upon an outline, a word sketch, a simple sentence, a note, the starting point of a story which I went on to write, which turned out just how I wanted it to turn out, or, in some cases, better, stories, poems, even novels, which actually got published. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that there is weed and there is chaff. For every diamond there is a whole world of rough. So, I fully intend to buy myself another notebook next week, fully intend to haul myself out of bed at 3 a.m. and jot down whatever nonsense happened to have jolted me from my sleep, because I know that sooner or later, through much trial, much error I’ll capture something from that ever elusive ether of ideas that might just turn into a gem, a fine story well worth the telling.


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