Calming down from my Exercise Book shopping joy, I sit down and start the entry about the night-time caller anew. It becomes riddled with crossings-out, floating corrections and other revisions: quite shockingly so. Were I back at school and the entry a piece of English homework, my teachers and parents would be very worried indeed. But the draft of the subsequent entry (this one) is a definite improvement, with such mistakes in markedly reduced abundance. It is an exercise book in every sense: my longhand muscle is getting a workout.
After the first entry is finished, the results are so full of corrections that I decide to go to a second draft, this time using an A4 London Library notebook, with a matt blue cover. I rewrite the Silvine draft, and incorporate the better elements from the aborted Moleskine attempt of the previous day. Even so, there’s still quite a few crossings-out and corrections.
Finally, I go online and type up the entry. And even at this stage I am revising and changing things.
So there it is. My first diary entry to be drafted in three separate notebooks. I don’t think it’s noticeably better than the best of my diary archives, but it’s certainly better than the first Moleskine draft. All I’ve done is try to make it as good as all the entries I’ve written digitally, except that I have evidence of the process on paper. And it’s being presented with this detail that I hope will train me to write more accurately from the off.
Thanks to the notebook drafts I can see every early wording, every single one of the changes, and not have them lost to the ether as soon as a ‘Save’ button is pressed. Longhand drafts shape the mind in an entirely different way to computers, logging each decision to omit or augment, every choice in the void of all possibilities.
I don’t deny there must also be a sense of unfettered nostalgia in the mix, reclaiming my pre-digital years as a boy of letters and diligent school pupil. But either way, the switch to paper drafts has given me a rush of pure satisfaction unparalleled by any drug, legal or otherwise. It’s so good to see my handwriting again.
***
In the British Library today. As Readers arrive, they have to pick up a special transparent carrier bag for taking into the Reading Rooms. This way, the security guards can quickly check they’re not stealing any of the Library’s stock.
In the cloakroom, as I’m preparing my own clear bag, I can’t help noticing one item that the young lady next to me is placing in hers. It is a large white frisbee.
I wonder if she uses it when staff aren’t looking, like Steve Martin’s roller skating in art galleries in LA Story.
Additionally, I note that the man on duty at the Library’s Information Desk is wearing a monocle.
***
Dad relates a story from my childhood. It’s a hot summer day, and he’s meeting me when school is out at the crossing by the gates. I am wearing my neat school grey sweater, with my shirt collar buttoned up, and an immaculately knotted tie.
Dad: Don’t you want to take off your tie and sweater like all the other boys?
Me: No.
Dad: (puzzled) Why not?
Me: I like to be smart.
I am all of seven years old.
