My Paper Addiction

My name is Funkypeanut, and I am a paper addict.  Last November I came across the Fountain Pen Network and joined because I've always loved FPs, but in the discussions I realized that I didn't have much to say about them.  Most of my posts are in the paper fora, and that experience has made me face the fact of my paper addiction.

I blame my mother -- and not just because Freud told me to. When I was little, there was a small chain of paper good/office supply stores in our city, and my mother used to take my brother and me there for a treat when we were out shopping.  They had boxes and boxes of all sorts of fancy paper and row upon row of notebooks, pens, pencils...  Well, you get the idea.  In early August (school shopping time!), my mother would take us to the big flagship store at the other end of town to get our supplies, and I always had the coolest of anybody in school.  I remember notebooks with fuzzy covers, textured covers that I could do pencil rubbings on, colored paper, scented paper, the sorts of things that my own child's school now won't allow anywhere near the premises.

And I used the paper, reams and reams of it!  I began writing stories at the age of five and filled entire notebooks.  Then when I was about ten, I got an old used manual typewriter and banged on it until everyone in the house wanted to take a sledgehammer to it.  I remember that our cat was fascinated with it and would try to catch the keys as they struck the paper.  He walked around with little black letters on his white forepaws.  The computers came along in high school, but writing on one wasn't nearly as satisfying as putting ink on paper.

I still write profusely, pages and pages a day.  I grew up to be a dotty academic, so these days most of what I write consists of notes for my research or articles and chapters explaining it all, although I still occasionally dabble in fiction or creative nonfiction.  And of course I keep a journal -- three, in fact, one daily journal, one sketch journal and one inspiration journal.  I spill ink like Genghis Khan spilt blood, often and in large quantities but with purpose.

Here are some of my notebooks:

I'll probably be writing about some of these in the coming weeks. And, yes, I know that there are a couple of things in there that aren't really notebooks. This is just the crop of paper products that are currently in use, minus a Moleskine planner and two black Picadilly notebooks that I didn't add to the pile.