University
Not Just a Notebook!
In this era of AI, during which we’ve seen the establishment of the ‘UK AI safety institute’, it’s perhaps more important now than ever that we understand where AI helps but also hinders human creativity.
Rather remarkably, here at Middlesex University, we’ve found of late that we actually need to explain to students why it’s still vital for them to work with pen and paper, especially if they’re to keep their ‘creative muscles’ worked, practised and well developed!
We shouldn’t take for granted the considerable and in many ways unique value of the creative’s notebook! And so, we’ve collected and curated a whole set of images and testimonials to evidence to all comers (but particularly to creatives) how world-leading writers like Neil Gaiman still need to produce the initial draft of their work using a fine pen and a quality notebook!
Courtesy of the British Library’s Fantasy: Realms of Imagination exhibition
And from Middlesex University’s writers
“I usually take a hybrid response to my notetaking. I couldn't possibly do my work on my laptop alone, which I find too rigid and formal. I use a notepad for sketching my ideas and jotting down random thoughts. There's something that happens in this space that's so real and tangible and brings out creativity in a way hardware never will.”
[Sophie Knowles, academic, journalist and author]
“Writing with pen and paper allows thoughts and ideas to flow unimpeded from mind to hand to paper. No alerts. No memes. No distractions. It is creativity at its finest - personal, explorative, artistic. What's not to love?!”
[Lara Thompson, novelist and academic]
There is beauty and skill in handwriting that we often forget. The intricacy and complexity of Chinese characters, the rigid strokes of English lettering and the flowing calligraphic curves of Arabic script are a unique and artistic part of our history and culture as humanity. By not holding onto our ability to write with a pen and paper we as a species will lose a fundamental, privileged skill that at the beginning of time was afforded only to the educated and elite. Besides, once the world passes from the Anthropocene and completely into the Technocene, the AI overlords will not be able to decipher my handwritten missives via carrier pigeon.
[Amie Brochu, PhD researcher and author]
“In fantasy writing it’s perhaps an almost universal truth that magic has a cost, a balance to be repaid and, in a way, all writing is a bit like that. To get the purest joy out of our craft, we must put our energy into it, our ink, sweat and tears. I’d encourage anyone who wants to give creative writing a go, to get a notebook and pen they love and then open a doorway to another world – a realm of their making that cannot easily be undone with the click of a button.”
[Jasmin Mulvey, PhD research and author]
"There is a 'graphology' to pen-and-paper based writing, with its edits and crossings-out, that allows you to keep all iterations of your thoughts in one place as a single complex at a glance - it is still the superior tool for initial drafting and working out."
[A J Dalton, SFF author]
“Not only does writing by hand allow one to write at the speed of thought and capture ideas on the fly but it is satisfyingly tactile. Studies have shown the very act of moving the pen around the page boosts brain activity and helps with recall later.”
[Mark Kirkbride, academic and author]
“Physical notebooks have a kind of magical quality for me. They are deeply practical, as they can’t crash, get hacked, etc. Getting a notebook with aesthetic appeal draws me to write. I always use pencil, I like the tentative feel of this medium; it also takes me back to my previous life as an art student. I write snippets of dialogue, plot ideas, and character sketches, as well as useful images. Often jotting down a preliminary idea gets it out of my head so I can look at it critically. Just as often, it makes on the way towards a better idea. The portability and immediacy of a notebook give me direct access to a playful and informal aspect of my creativity which has energised my fiction. I use notebooks from Paperblanks, who take celebrated examples of classic bookbinding and turn them into notebooks. You can’t help but pick them up. Having a dedicated object which I only use for my creative practice also means that my creative self is always ready and online, wherever I am. I’ve found it deeply empowering."
[Ariel Kahn, author and academic]
“Welcome to the chaotic, multi-modal space that I call "my desk" where the analogue and digital overlap. From brain to hand to pen to paper, there is a continuous tactile and neurological connection: the pen in the hand responds faster and more organically to creative thought than even the most ergonomic software, whose role here is to fact-check and polish, not to blue sky a new idea. Don't spend hours trying to fit your ideas into a restrictive digital box: let them flow like the free drawing of a child scribbling with crayons, because that was when you were never more creative or perceptive.”
[Mike Ranson, PhD researcher and author]
“What I love about creative writing (what we all enjoy) is how a developing story engages imagination. A consensus among researchers suggests that the very act of handwriting on a piece of paper involves more brain activity and therefore leads to better memory recall of what you’ve physically written down. The pen is mightier than the keyboard for stoking the creative process and for keeping track of prior Imagineering you considered and otherwise may have forgotten.”
[Gabriel Wisdom, author, PhD researcher and radio DJ]
“Without the distraction of open tabs, notifications, or a buzzing screen, writing with pen-and-paper affords the imagination the quiet space it needs to truly take flight.”
[Joe Smith, author and PhD researcher]
“For me, there’s something about the journey of the pen across a page – the lines and loops and curlicues and crossings-out traversing space, that allows the expansiveness of a thought. It’s the notebook I return to to track impulses or ideas, or when I’m stuck, to find again the reason for writing in the first place.”
[Charlotte Thompson, academic and author]
These photos show pages from my notebooks for The Central Line. Running through the novel is a series of interconnected stories, and the pages on the right contain my workings-out for a mind-map of how the stories relate to one another.
In The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain, Annie Murphy Paul relates how physicist Richard Feynman reacted when an interviewer referred his notes and sketches as a “record” of his work.
“I actually did the work on the paper,” he said.
“Well, the work was done in your head,” the interviewer replied, “but the record of it is still here.”
But Feynman wasn’t happy with that way of putting it. “No,” he insisted, “It’s not a record, not really. It’s working. You have to work on paper and this is the paper. Okay?”
Psychologists call “extended cognition” the way which the mind embraces external objects as part of its processes. Extending one’s imagination into a notebook can help clarify the non-verbal patterns underlying your fiction. . .
[Adam Lively, author and academic]
