don't need my eyes open wide/i just wanna feel something

"hello cold world" by paramore & my writing notebook

I’m deep in drafting mode right now, which means lately I’ve been living in my Writing Notebook. I’ve also been (re)living my time on the Parahoy cruise, but that’s a story for a different day.

My Writing Notebook has happened to come up a lot lately with various people. Because they’re also drafting and told me they’ve started a Writing Notebook of their own (Anita Kelly just wrote a lovely newsletter about 10 things that got them through the year, for example, where they referenced keeping a writing journal as one of them). Because people were curious what brand of notebook to buy, or what kinds of things to write in it. Because they saw me post a (rare for me lol) recap of my writing sprint results to my Instagram stories and wanted to know a bit more about my process.

So in this post, since I’m feeling that end-of-the-year urge to reflect and also to close the book (so to speak) on With Love, from Cold World for a little bit as I move out of its season and into another year, I thought I’d share with you more from that Writing Notebook in particular.

(I did actually share some snippets already, in my newsletter from the day the book came out! But a) my focus then was more on the book and less on the Writing Notebook, per se; and b) sometimes this newsletter is going to be the same stories over and over, y’all, I’m sorry, I’ve only lived one life and sometimes I can’t remember what I’ve already told you or else just feel like repeating.)

The working title for the book was Hello Cold World and that’s part of why to this day I still just call it Cold World a lot! Title changes can be hard lol.

The type of notebook I personally use is a DesignWorks Inc. Standard Issue Notebook No. 3. At first I chose it, frankly, just because it was what they had at the local stationery supply store I went to and I thought, hey, this’ll do. I like it because it has (fairly standard) features of a little pen holder on the side so I can keep my Special Pen* with it; and also little bookmark ribbons so I can mark important pages I want to refer back to/so my cat has something to play with while I’m trying to actively work in it.

It also has pages with the months and numbers 1-31 listed along the top of every page, so you can just circle the date for that particular page, which I love because otherwise I’d probably have forgotten to date stuff. Finally, the notebook lays flat on the table, which is important to me. I hate when you’re writing a lot and using all your (meager) forearm strength to hold down the pages while your writing gets extra scratchy and weird the closer you get to the binding. With this notebook you don’t have to live that life!

I keep a separate Writing Notebook for every full-length novel I draft, and have so far for every single one of my adult romances. I got the idea from a Fast Drafting course I took with Lindsay Eagar. I want to say that she referenced an essay by Alexander Chee that talked about doing something similar, which may have been this one.

Of course, apparently sometimes I STILL forgot to date pages lol.

At the start of almost every Writing Notebook is just a bunch of freewriting about the plot of the book as I’ve thought of it thus far, bullet points of scene ideas, pages of details about various characters, etc. Part of my process is that I’ve usually thought about a book a LOT before I sit down to write it, so while I don’t really “outline” per se, I have a lot of stuff in my head and I just want to get it all down somewhere. Above is the first page of my “Brain Dump” about Lauren and Asa, which reads:

Lauren Fox is the bookkeeper at a winter amusement part called Cold World. She grew up in a group home (not bad at all, but very transactional) and has always prized routine, consistency, stability. She got the job when the little old lady owner took a chance on her, so she is very loyal. She’s seen as something of a “robot” by her colleagues, including Asa. Maybe she had to tell him he wasn’t eligible for overtime once, and that caused some antipathy? She has a crush on Daniel, the shop owner’s son. She is volunteering as a Guardian ad Litem. Brown hair, glasses.

Asa Williamson is a general worker at Cold World — he works the hot cocoa stand, the gift shop, does maintenance, etc. He’s worked at Cold World for 10 years. He has a carefree, jokester attitude which drives Lauren crazy. He also has a bit of a chip on his shoulder about not going to college, etc. He’s really into art but thinks he can’t do anything w/ it. He has tattoos and blue hair. He’s bisexual and a pastor’s son who was kicked out when his dad found out. He has an older sister who’s having a baby.

You can see that all pretty much ended up in the book! Except apparently the little backstory I had about an overtime kerfuffle (what can I say, I read a lot of Ask a Manager) and also I saw Dolores’ character differently at this point.

Sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of this stuff, even as you’re drafting — writing a book can take a long time, and this one took longer than it probably “should’ve,” which I go into in that previous newsletter I referenced. So it’s really nice to have all these notes in one place, where you can flip back through them and remind yourself of a scene idea you had once, a theme you wanted to explore, whatever.

I go through all the stages of grief in my Writing Notebook, but my favorite is definitely the Bargaining stage, where I come up with reward systems for myself if I hit a certain word count or laboriously calculate out new proposed Writing Schedules This Time I Mean It with either encouraging messages OR vague threats attached, depending on my mood.

In my current draft’s notebook, I’ve been doing less of this and more of just tracking how many words I write in a given writing sprint time. I set a timer for 20 minutes, write down 10:53-11:13 or whatever, and then write until the timer goes off and record how many words I was able to write. Weirdly I am much more accountable to myself than I am to someone else. I *have* done writing sprints with partners before, but there is at least a 15% chance I brazenly pulled out a book and started reading it instead (if we were doing them online) or just started typing random song lyrics (if we were doing them in person). I’m sorry. I don’t know what makes me do that. I don’t think there has been a single in-class writing exercise I participated in fully without fucking off a bit. I find it hard to write with an audience!!

Then we get into the heart of the Writing Notebook, the main thing I like to use it for! For every project, I buy a bunch of stickers to reward myself with every 1,000 words (I definitely got this from a V.E. Schwab Instagram post!). I like to try to make the stickers somewhat thematic to the project — it just makes it more fun. For Cold World, I found a whole pad of them at the same stationery store where I bought the notebook that had a lot of office-y themed ones in it.

So every 1,000 words or so, I stop to give myself a sticker, write a quote from that section that I like, write some thoughts/notes on what I just wrote, and then write what’s coming next.

For example, the page above is dated December 14 and says:

13,072 - Ripping of a piece of the sticky pad, she drew a little word bubble and then wrote inside: I’m getting a strong “A” vibe . . . Asa? Ass?

Thoughts: What if instead of him being upset, it actually kind of cheers him up?

Next: He talks to his sister, talks to Kiki about his day, then sees the note on the fridge.

I love writing the quote in particular because it’s a way to actively seek out parts I’m loving about what I’ve done so far. Sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised that there are several lines I like and I can’t decide which part I want to put in the notebook. Some of these quotes end up being the ones I love most in the final book, too, so it’s nice to see how they carry through — how there was a core of something there from the very beginning.

The “thoughts/notes” section is open-ended, and can be anything. Here, for example, I was trying to think about different ways the scene could go depending on how Asa reacted to Lauren’s note. Of course he was going to love it. He loves little jokes and pranks, he loves that she surprises him in this way by playing one of her own, he’s DYING that she apparently came over and he wasn’t even home. You know that weird feeling you get when you know somebody has been in your space, and it just feels different, like you’re looking at it through their eyes and wondering how they saw it? If that’s a microtrope, I love it.

The “next” section is exactly what it sounds like, and is a way to try to always keep the momentum going, look ahead with my one headlight on so I can plan where to drive the car next.

The page above is dated December 22 and says:

20,033 - It had taken him by complete surprise. Not only the sudden icy pressure on his neck, but the fact that she’d done it at all. It seemed very un-Lauren.

Thoughts: I always feel doubt around this time, right? It’s not just with this book? I have no idea what I’m doing.

Next: Maybe Asa and Kiki invite her to the beach? Does she come or not?

Another moment where Lauren surprises him! But the real reason I chose this particular section to show you is because this is one of my most helpful notes to myself, actually. There’s a running joke truth among writers about “help how do I write a book” or “can’t believe I’ve never written a book before.” I guess I can’t speak for every writer — like James Patterson sure has figured out a system that works for him! — but it really can feel like you’re a beginner every single time you go to the blank page even if it’s your second or third or tenth book.

So not only do I like writing about those feelings AS I’m writing, but I love being able to look back on them later, even as I’m writing the next project. Like, yes, it turns out that a wave of self-doubt is INCREDIBLY normal around 20k or so! These tend to happen around big turning points in the manuscript! Would you look at that!

When you think about it, a book is just a series of cause-and-effect events, little crossroads where the characters could go left . . . or they could go right. Here, for example, I still didn’t know if Lauren was going to go to the beach or not! But like, c’mon, of course she had to go to the beach!

The page above is dated January 5 and says:

36,071 - Lauren Fox was standing in front of him wearing a poinsettia red dress, her dark hair loose around her bare shoulders. She looked really . . . his mind blanked, unable to come up with a word other than good. But maybe it was less about the word and more about the emphasis, because she looked really, really fucking good.

Thoughts: Promise of the Premise right here!

Next: They’re locked in together!

lol I just included this part because I really like it. :) And because sometimes you’re vibing and the writing is flowing and the Writing Notebook is fun and all but just keep going! You’re in the pocket!

Once again, though, it can be very helpful for FUTURE projects to be able to go back to old writing notebooks and flip to any word count and see what was happening in your manuscript at that point! Like sometimes as I’m writing I’m thinking, jfc, I can’t believe I’m not even to x yet . . . but then when I look at past manuscripts at the same word count I’m like, oh. You weren’t there yet then, either. Chill out, Alicia, you have time.

(where x is almost always the first kiss, why am I even trying to front)

The page above is dated March 26 and says:

87,000 - “Did you mean it?” he asked, still not looking at her. “When you said I was with you. Did you mean that?”

Thoughts: Right in the feels!!! You’ve still got it! (This is me faking self-confidence to pump myself up!!!)

Next: Asa lays one on her (flame emoji)

One of the parts that makes sharing this notebook feel very vulnerable is that . . . hmm, how do I say this. If you catch me writing “wow I’m a piece of shit” to myself, then I worry that you’ll think, “oh I hadn’t thought of it that way, but she IS a piece of shit.” If you catch me writing “fuck yeah I’m awesome!!!” then I worry that you’ll think, “oh no, this is tragic, she doesn’t realize she’s a piece of shit.”

But that obviously comes from the fact that I’m breaking a bit of the pact of silence around this Writing Notebook because I wanted to tell you how it’s been helpful to me. Truthfully, one of the ways the Writing Notebook can be the MOST helpful to you is that you can write whatever you want with no thought of any audience except yourself. Call yourself a piece of shit if it makes you feel better. (I do mean it as an endearment to myself although I recognize that I could come up with a kinder one.) Or gas yourself up, tell yourself, FUCK YEAH!!! I’VE STILL GOT IT!!!! BEST BELIEVE I’M STILL BEJEWELED MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!!!!!!!!

Whatever you need. And there are lots, lots of entries in here that I’m NOT sharing, because of how personal/private they feel, but I love looking back at them for myself and just seeing how I was feeling or what I was worried about or when I was in the zone.

For example, a few more things I used the notebook for (not pictured):

• a calendar to keep track of the timeline of the book, which I thought I had DOWN and then discovered in copyedits I’d massively fucked up and had to fix lololol, prompting me to say, “I’m never writing a book with a set timeline EVER AGAIN!” (this book takes place from December 1 through New Year’s Eve), and then I promptly turned around and wrote a book SET AROUND A BASEBALL SEASON but you could bounce a fucking QUARTER off my timeline for that book, wait till I show you THAT spread from the Baseball Writing Notebook because it’s low-key NSFW;

• notes from reference books I read, Romancing the Beat when I reverse-outlined the book after I’d written a draft, etc.;

• notes from phone calls and emails I had with my editor and various beta readers; and

• a page entitled WHY DO I HAVE SUCH A BLOCK W/ THESE EDITS that’s honestly so real I should rip it out so I can refer to it with every single book.

So that’s a little bit about my Writing Notebook, in case it’s helpful to you or inspires you to start one for your own projects! In addition to all the ways I’ve outlined above that it’s helpful, I love having this thing that helps keep me really focused on the process. And I love being able to go back and see that process instead of having it all disappear in a blur.

If nothing else, my Writing Notebook is probably the thing that makes me feel the most like a Writer. Like when I was a kid — maybe 5th grade or so — I remember finding this scratchy wool shawl and thinking, this is going to be my Writing Shawl. When I wear it, I’ll know I’m a Real Writer. It’ll transport me to a garret somewhere, with my notebook and fountain pen, writing by the last light from my oil lantern or whatever (I read a lot of L.M. Montgomery books as a kid).

Of course, I quickly abandoned my Writing Shawl because it was hella scratchy! And I wasn’t in a garret, I was in a suburban Florida home! It was too hot for wool! And then I’m trying to lean over my composition book and write “I hate egg sandwiches” or whatever poetic turn of phrase is floating through my nimble little mind and this fucking SHAWL just keeps sliding down my shoulders and getting in the way!

So yeah, the Writing Shawl was a bust. But the Writing Notebook . . . ah, that makes me feel like I’m really Doing Something Here. And sometimes we need that feeling.

Currently reading . . . I just finished A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh because Martha Waters posted on her Instagram story to read it without knowing anything about it going in. Challenge accepted!!! I also LOVE Mary Balogh and she was very formative to my romance writing. I will not tell you anything about this book in case you, too, want the experience Martha Waters has curated for us with her intriguing Instagram story.

watching . . . I didn’t talk more about the song this week, “Hello Cold World,” because . . . well, technically I wrote a whole essay inspired by it for the B&N Exclusive Edition and I didn’t want to belabor the point! But since I have been watching some of the Parahoy concert footage lately, I’ll say that the live performance of “Hello Cold World” I linked to above is my absolute favorite, and my main goal with Cold World was to have it feel even remotely close to the way I feel from about 2:14 - 2:41 in that video, from when she sings the line that gives the title to this newsletter through when she stomps her foot along to the kick drum beat.

listening to . . . Surprise, surprise, I am . . . back on my true crime bullshit a bit! My husband introduced me to The Casual Criminalist and when I was busy doing my little Happy Color and saw a notification at the top of my screen that an episode on the Menendez Brothers had dropped, I was like . . . well, that’s my Saturday night sorted. (The host is British and so I have found several British-isms already slipping into my vocabulary.) The format is that he has people write these scripts for him about various true crime events, and then he reads them cold and live-reacts to them as he reads. I don’t know, it’s very compelling!!

*I have hidden this all the way down here, but — I have fallen out of favor with my Special Pen, and am open to suggestions for a new one! For these notebooks, I like black ink, I like it to be fairly bold, I like it to not smear or bleed through too much . . . seriously, my kingdom for the pen that does it all because so far my options have been a fine felt-tip (boldness great, non-smear value great, BUT the nib wears down and then I have to write with my hand straight up and down instead of sideways and my handwriting becomes HORRIBLE and also it hurts); a Pilot G2 type of pen (‘salright, but hella smeary); or a pen that is just too thin and spidery for my liking. Bold!! But not smeary!!! What do you suggest?