Emily Krempholtz: I Am A Writer

I have a confession to make. My name is Emily Krempholtz, and I am an addict.

From a young age, my nana and grandpa would take us to the dollar store and tell me and my siblings we could each pick out one thing. My selection was pretty standard: I'd choose either a porcelain elephant figurine to add to my collection, or I'd buy a notebook.

My pack of pachyderms remains to this day on a shelf in my childhood bedroom, untouched, collecting dust and fond glances when I come home for the occasional weekend or day trip. But my notebook collection is out of control and still growing.

Shopping at Target with friends? Nine times out of ten I will disappear, only to be found in the office supplies section, staring longingly at the Moleskines. Writer's block while at my usual table in the Barnes and Noble cafe? I'll take a trip to the floor-to-ceiling shelf in the front corner by the registers, where the notebooks and journals are kept, to help clear my mind and gather my thoughts.

I have piles and piles of notebooks in my bedroom, waiting to be used, just begging to be filled with my thoughts, my lists, my words, my doodles. I have Italian leather bound books with thick, creamy pages, hardcover books of every color, and composition notebooks galore. I've got one notebook in which every page looks like a different kind of wall: stone, concrete, brick, wood-paneled, wallpapered... just waiting to be graffitied. And yet I can't seem to stop buying more. I buy them as rewards for getting through a difficult week or for finishing an important task, or as inspiration for a new project. There's just something about that blank book, a collection of pages completely empty but for their potential. I save them for the perfect project, for the perfect content. Sometimes they are used immediately, other times they wait for years, but eventually each of them will be filled with cramped scribblings in black ink. Of that I am positive.

At any given time I use about three or four notebooks. Currently, there's the tiny green one I keep in my purse with its matching little black pen. I keep track of my expenses and my earnings from month to month (and let me tell you, the number of times an entry titled "Barnes & Noble" appears in that little book is staggering) and I write lists. Grocery lists, lists of things to do, ideas for stories and blog posts, funny things my customers and coworkers have said to me at work, addresses, reminders, thoughts about a book or movie I'm planning on reviewing... Sometimes I just jot down a single word, expecting myself to remember its significance later on. I rarely do, but often it sparks an equally -- if not more -- fascinating train of thought.

I bought a big 11x15" hardcover sketchbook from a craft store when I was writing the first draft of my novel. I think much better on paper than on a computer screen, and I needed to sort out things like timelines, family trees, and background information. I use it to jot down little details I might forget later, for continuity purposes, and I have pages and pages devoted to character outlines, potential names, birth dates and specific ages, and historical facts. One of my best friends, an artist, helps me through writer's block sometimes by making me tell her personal details about my characters, from their deepest fears to what their teeth look like. She draws them for me, and the sketches she's given to me stay in my Big Black Book of Secrets, as it has come to be called.

Now that I am into the editing process I keep my notes for each draft in this book, writing down little things I notice here or there that should be added or moved around, or inconsistencies in plot or characterization that I should address in my next draft. I love it because the pages don't have lines. I can write in it like a notebook, doodle in it like a sketchbook, or draw up countless organizational graphs, the kind they taught you in middle school but you never actually used when writing essays.

And then there's the journals. I've kept a journal pretty consistently since about the age of eight. It relaxes me to write down the details of my life, and of course I, like many other writers, harbor the secret and vain hope that someday I might publish a memoir (after I become rich and famous, obviously). Several years ago I spent a semester studying in London, followed by a month of backpacking across Europe. I had the time of my life, but I was too poor to buy many souvenirs (or even much food, for that matter), so I rely on my photos and journal entries from that time to serve as my time machine.

From the scrawled worries about the boys I had crushes on at age ten, to the even more messily scrawled worries about my college lifestyle (including, but not limited to, the boys I had crushes on. Clearly I have done a lot of maturing), my journals piece together a patchwork story of my life. I didn't write about it all, and in fact a lot of it is eye roll inducing and repetitive, but the things I valued at the time, the things that made me tick, tell more about me than the things I could have written about, but didn't.

I've spent the past few days rereading passages, alternately reminiscing, laughing, and shaking my head in shame at the things that my past self deemed important enough to immortalize on paper. I looked at the way I used to say "bye!" or "g2g!" at the end of each entry (ah, the acronyms of early 2000's...) and the way the entire structure of my journals changed noticeably every time I read a new book I liked and wanted to emulate stylistically. I'm fascinated by my handwriting, constantly changing as I, obnoxiously self-aware even as a child, struggled to make my messy script fit some mold, to convey something about who I was even as I tried to discover what that meant.

My more recent journals have evened out a bit; the style and tone have become more natural and relaxed, and much more consistent. I've given up on my handwriting as a lost cause. Oscillating somewhere between script and print and chicken scratch, it's barely legible at times, but I've come to realize that I have finally achieved what I wanted so badly when I was younger: my handwriting is me. I can tell from the way those letters are formed my state of mind at the time when I wrote it. Was I rushed? Was I angry? Were the words very thought out? Was I writing in public or in bed or in the back seat of a moving car?

I've come to decipher those markings as more than words, as though they speak a second language in and of themselves. And thus I've discovered that not in spite, but because of the inconsistencies in the content of my entries, and my inability to record sometimes the more basic details of my life in favor of the more ridiculous and dramatic, my journals really do tell, between the lines, the story of my life. Even if no one else could comprehend it.

And that, more than anything, has kept me writing in these notebooks. I am one of the minority in my generation in that I still do not own an iPhone, but to be honest, even if I had one, I don't know that I could organize my life solely through an electronic device like my friends do. There's just something so lovely about writing by hand, about watching those smooth shapes materialize from the tip of your pen. I've even developed a begrudging fondness for the near-permanent ink stain on my left pinky finger (that bane of left-handed writers everywhere!) to the point where I've thought about getting it tattooed there as a subtle reminder to myself of who I am. The growing piles of empty notebooks in my room don't panic me, or make me feel like I should be doing more or writing more. They wait patiently for a project deemed worthy enough for them, and serve to remind me that I am doing what I was always meant to do.

My name is Emily Krempholtz, and I am not an addict.

I am a writer.

Emily Krempholtz is a graduate of Ithaca College's esteemed Roy H. Park School of Communications. She wrote her first book at the age of four and has dreamed of being a writer ever since. As a new resident in the Land of Adults, she tries to face life armed with a pen, paper, and a wicked sense of humor. She currently lives in Ithaca, NY and can usually be found holed up in the Barnes & Noble cafe working on her novel, or at the barn with the love of her life, a horse named Marea. 

As a giveaway, Emily has offered one of her many empty notebooks, "I'd be happy to part with one so long as it goes to a good home! I'd also like to give away a package of my favorite quick-drying black pens (perfect for lefties, so they don't smudge all over your fingers or the page!) "  Please leave a comment and a way to reach you, and check back on Sunday, June 30 to see if you have won!

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A Notebook for Memorial Day

This afternoon, my friend Janis Hyland sent me a link to a beautiful and amazing story about a notebook that traveled through time and love.  For Memorial Day, I offer you this piece by Janet McConnaughey.

Over the next few weeks, please expect to see more posts here at Sharing Our Notebooks.  I apologize for my lapse in posting as I worked to promote my new book, FOREST HAS A SONG.  Many people have expressed interest in sharing in this space, and so we're back!  If you are a notebook keeper (art, recipes, photos, anything) of any age and would like to share here, please just drop me a line to amy at amylv dot com.

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Congratulations to Cathy!

Cathy is the winner of Angela Stockman's giveaway of WRITING MAGIC by Gail Carson Levine!  Please leave a comment or send a message with your snail mail address so that Angela can send your book!

Thank you again to Angela for your generous post and for giving away this super book.

Readers - if you or one of your students or friends keeps a notebook and is willing to share in this space, please send an e-mail to amy at amylv dot com.  I welcome your contributions and will send you the post specs for this blog!

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Angela Stockman: Space for the Busyness

Thinking about sharing my love of notebooks here, I began to panic just a little.

I’m not sure I have a notebook, I thought to myself, remembering all of the gorgeous notebooks I've become acquainted with on this blog. I don’t have anything worthwhile to share.

I’ll bet I’m not the only writing teacher who feels this way about her writing life.

Things are so busy, and at first I assumed that I was yet another victim: a writing teacher who sacrifices her own writing life to the work that must be done for others each day. Notebooks? Who has time for notebooks?

Well, as it turns out, I do. In fact, I always have. Notebooks are such an integral part of my life that I just wasn't noticing them anymore. Not until now.

When I was young, I made diaries out of folded sheets of construction paper. When we didn't have any, I would sneak a pile of lined paper home from my desk at school. I've kept them in a box in my closet all of these years. My face burns when I read them, but I can’t bear to toss them out. These were my first notebooks, after all.

My diaries had boundaries. I wrote in these books every day then, mostly about the boys I “loved”, the pets that I had, the friends I was arguing with, and why I “hated” my parents on that particular day. I was fourteen then. These were the topics that mattered to me. Writing “bed to bed” stories that captured every mundane detail of my life helped me survive it, in a way. This is how writing nurtured me then.

As I grew older, I kept writing. I also began working, and every once in a while, I would splurge on a new, beautiful notebook. This is the one I was keeping when I met my husband, John. Sometimes, I revisit it when I’m writing him a present. Those memories fuel that kind of writing for me, even now. They are artifacts of some of the most important days of my life. 

And here’s something interesting I've noticed: as I grew older, the notebooks and even many of the entries become less boundaried. My daily writing opened up to make space for the busyness of my life, and I’m still capturing much of it in words, even though it’s often for very different purposes. 

I noticed this first in the notebook above. The back cover features a scribbled set of directions. I used this page to jot down the route to John’s first apartment…the very first time he shared it with me over the phone. At the time, I needed something to write on, and I know this was sitting on my dresser, next to the phone I was speaking into (which had a cord, thank you very much). I grabbed it and wrote quickly. This was the first time the minutia of my daily life wandered into my notebook. It wasn't the last time, though. 

I used to feel guilty about this. Now I’m realizing that I’m glad for that. 

Today, I always have a notebook with me, but it isn't as contained as it looks. This is the one I’m keeping right now:

I’ve become pickier about the features I desire. For instance, my favorite notebooks are exactly this size. They have a ribbon glued into the spine, so that I can find my place easily. They have a pocket at the back, where I can shove important notes, documents, trinkets, and cards. Things I want to remember. Things I don’t want to forget. I always write in blue pen or with a fine point Sharpie marker.

I use my notebook to contain my ideas. I also use it plan. I keep track of my to-do lists right beside the draft of a blog post I’m writing and lessons I’m planning for the writers I teach. And I always maintain a running list of personal writing territories at the very back of each book. You’ll find a list of fun things I want to do with my kids back there too. And movies I want to see. And books I want to read. Cookies I need to bake. Plants I need to find for my garden.

As my life becomes busier and messier, my notebooks have too. They've also become the central hub for all of my thinking, planning, and work—personal and professional. 

“I’m surprised you don’t keep all of that on your phone,” a school administrator commented earlier this year.

“Oh no,” I smiled. “I can’t. There’s something about writing with a pen that helps me brainstorm and plan better.” I need to be able to move words around. This is probably why my grown-up notebooks are littered with Post-Its. 

I do use my phone for something else though: to take pictures of things I don’t want to forget. My photo stream has become a mighty source for writing ideas and inspiration over the years. Anne Lamott brilliantly advises writers to tuck index cards into their pockets. I used to do this. Now I point and shoot. 

My photo files are a different kind of notebook. And my life is a very different kind of life now, too. I wonder how my changing life will influence the shape of my notebooks over time. I wonder how my notebooks will continue to support the changing shape of my life.


Angela Stockman found her home inside of a classroom twenty years ago. In many ways, she never left. Each day, she travels to schools throughout Western New York and works beside teachers who are discovering how to help kids fall in love with words. In April of 2008, Angela founded the WNY Young Writers' Studio, a community comprised of children and teachers who are learning how to use their words to make a difference in the world. 

Angela has generously offered to send a copy of Gail Carson Levine's WRITING MAGIC, an inspiring book about writing, to a reader of this post.  Please leave a comment and a way to reach you, and check back on Sunday, March 24 to see if you have won!

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Amy Zimmer Merrill: Collage Journals

Ever since I was a child, I have been fascinated with and drawn towards notebooks and journals of all kinds.  It was a treat to get to receive a blank notebook that was filled with empty pages, just waiting to be filled with possibilities!  A trip to the drugstore might lead to the treat of getting a new notebook, visiting a great aunt who would regularly place a little treasure in her desk drawer for me (maybe a new box of crayons, a card game or a notebook!), or the beginning of a new school year, when we got new school supplies, all of these occasions hold the memory of a new notebook.  Blank notebooks are like new beginnings.    

So, from these early memories of childhood, to my teen years of diary keeping, to my adult years of recording any and every type of memory, event, occasion, musings, ideas for projects and plans, lists of all kinds, and basically anything and everything, one could say that I am a notebook/journal enthusiast.

Like many memory keepers, I do not limit my recollections and collections to only the written word, I also gather memorabilia that are tucked into the pages of a notebook.   Whether it is a greeting card, note,  well-love quote, photograph,  magazine/newspaper clipping,  ticket from an enjoyed event, or any interesting item, all have found their way into my books.  

Many of these loose pieces remain that way, simply nestled into a notebook, but many of them are also fastened to the page.  They are often hodge-podge together into a collage.  After a while, these collages (both complete and incomplete, waiting for the next, just-right treasure to be glued or taped down), travel from being on the inside of my notebooks to becoming the covers of them.  

In addition to loving notebooks, I have also adored books for as long as I can remember.  I became a collector of books, specifically children’s books.  I cannot seem to bear to part with books and find myself gathering those that others discard.  Most often, these discarded treasures become a part of the collection on my bookshelves, but sometimes, they have been so well-loved and read, that they are torn, tattered, and literally falling apart.  These are the books that have found new life inside my journals and on the covers – becoming the collage-design artwork.  I find that images can be another powerful way to gather, collect, and preserve inspirations, thoughts, interests and aspirations.  

If you haven’t already done so, I encourage you to make use of all of the little treasures that you keep in a shoebox somewhere and begin to assemble them on  both the inside,  and outside of your journals.  You might wish to create your own collage journals by collecting interesting items/pictures (from magazines, etc) to create the covers of writing notebooks and/or create collages inside of journals (photos, pictures, drawings that may spark writing ideas).  I personally think of my collages (especially the ones on the inside of my journals) as “treasure maps,” sort of along the lines of the “heart maps” that Georgia Heard discusses in her AWAKENING THE HEART – sort of a way for creative visualization.

Make your musings, ideas, dreams, and doodlings, visible by using visual images in and on your notebooks.  Have fun playing!

Amy Zimmer Merrill is a Reading Specialist currently working with kindergarten through second grade. She has also recently obtained a degree in School Library and Information Technology and presents literacy-related workshops with a dear friend and colleague. Amy loves to read, write, and talk about children’s books. She reviews children’s books for LMC Magazine (Library Media Connection) and shares her thoughts, ideas, and love for children’s literature, reading, and literacy at Mrs. Merrill’s Book Breaks.  You can also read Amy's post about Poetry Breaks at The Poem Farm.

Amy Zimmer Merrill will send a mini collage journal to a commenter on this post. Please leave your name and the best way to contact you along with your comment below and check back on Saturday, January 19 to see if you have won.  Many thanks to Amy!  

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Mary Lee Hahn: Following an Idea

I’ve been keeping journals or writer’s notebooks since I was in high school. In this picture is a stack from recent years. The rest are in a box somewhere in the basement!

My first notebooks were journals where I wrote about the trials and tribulations of being a teenager.  Later, when I became a teacher and learned about writing workshop, my notebooks were partly a model of what I wanted my students' notebooks to be, and partly a place where I took notes at conferences and meetings  It's embarrassing to admit, but my notebooks seldom did what they were supposed to do -- few pieces of writing were ever born in my notebook.

Fast forward to Poetry Month 2010.  I challenged myself to write a poem every day that April, and post it on our blog, A Year of Reading.  In honor of this project, I bought a new red notebook - my first poetry notebook.

That red volume lasted for two years worth of April Poetry Month poems.

This past March, I took part in Ed DeCaria's Madness! 2012 and the four poems I wrote for that competition were all born in that red notebook.

Here's a peek (below) at the early drafts of the poem that became Saffron Harvest.  My early notes were about how the stigmas of crocus flowers are used to make saffron, but then I spent several pages trying to write a poem about pigs and several more pages trying to write a poem about dandelions! Five pages later, I got back to saffron, and the final poem started to take shape.

Click image to enlarge and read

This year, something happened after Poetry Month was over:  I KEPT WRITING POETRY!  Now my poetry notebook is the pink one in the picture above.

Last weekend, I decided (at the eleventh hour) to take part in Jama Rattigan's month-long celebration of peanut butter.  Below, you can see the entire process for the poem I wrote.

Click image to enlarge and read

I won't need to start from scratch for my next poem.  I have notes in my notebook about this week's full moon, about the frost on the grass a couple of weeks ago, and about truth, lies, facts, honesty , and self-discipline.  The hardest thing about writing poetry isn't finding the ideas; it's making the time to follow an idea around and around, page after page, and for hour after hour until the poem is just right!

Poet, blogger, and fifth grade teacher Mary Lee Hahn blogs at A Year of Reading where you can explore her poems, musings, wisdom, photographs, and book recommendations.  She toasts writers' notebooks here!

In honor of Mary Lee's notebook keeping, I would like to offer a giveaway of an ecosystem notebook, just like the pink one above (your choice of color).  Please just leave a comment and a way to reach you, or check back at here on Saturday, December 15 to see if you have won.  

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What's in Mary Lee's Notebook?

What fun to find a peek inside of a friend's notebook.  Head on over to A Year of Reading to see Mary Lee's huuuge tomato!  You will also find a wonderful poem about notebooks and journals by William Stafford.

There is nothing like a peek into another's notebook.  What do you have in yours?

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