Authored By Alyssa

diary of a melancholy marketer: entry #2

My Substack feed is flooded with posts about the “perfect” set-up writing, a routine that will remove writer’s block, and how commonplace journaling is the best type of journaling because of that one Jodi Didion quote:

“Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Did any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all? It is easy to deceive oneself on all those scores. The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself…Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.”

Why, though, is the journal in question always French and comes with a $350 price tag? I hop onto my FYP and I’m affronted with tutorials on how to DIY a dupe of aforementioned journal for $80. My Pinterest feed is filled with giant tote bags bursting at the seams with annotated paperbacks of The Bell Jar and A Secret History, three leather-bound journals, a handful of fountain pens (why does one need multiple?), and a film camera.

It’s overwhelming.

And it makes me feel like authorship has an expensive barrier to entry, as if purchasing specialty ink knights you as an “official writer.”

When I told my husband about the paralysis I experienced when trying to decide what to use for drafting my Substack essays, he responded, “I have a bunch of legal pads I brought home from the office, do you want to try one of those?”

“Well, that’d be a little big and cumbersome to take around, don’t you—”

“If you hate it, fine. But it’s free, just try it,” he said, immediately cutting me off.

Swallowing a protest, I begrudgingly took the pad, stomped over to the couch to write the first draft of last week’s essay and fell in love.

Journals feel like too much commitment to budding authors (me) because every blank page is a physical reminder of all the missed opportunities to write. A blank document on a laptop is too bright, too blank, too intimidating. Former president Barack Obama (a fellow legal pad lover) said it best in his 2017 memoir titled The Promised Land:

“I still like to write things out in longhand, finding that a computer gives even my roughest drafts too smooth a gloss and lends halfbaked thoughts the mask of tidiness.”

There’s something magical about a legal pad. The yellow color is a respite from staring at multiple screens all day. The dimensions allow me to draw arrows and leave myself notes in the margins. The page can be easily ripped if I hate what I wrote or need a side-by-side comparison for a revised draft. Getting to the end of a page, flipping it over, and continuing on the back is addictive. I’ve never used a typewriter, but I imagine that’s what resetting the carriage and hearing that “click” feels like.

As it turns out, I didn’t need to go on a trip to the craft store hunting for scrap leather so I could make my own journal cover with four inserts. Unfortunately, I did not need to buy a freewrite to have a screen-free and distractionless environment. I just needed to be open-minded to what already existed in my house (sigh). I needed a legal pad.

This is the second diary entry of a melancholy marketer. Am I about to drop a link to a 10-pack of legal pads?

Don’t go out and buy a legal pad! Instead, I invite you to delete it from your cart, rummage through your desk/hall closet/bins under your bed, and fish out an old spiral notebook. It, too, has margins to leave little notes to yourself and space to cross out and draw arrows. It’s easy to rip pages for drafting, comparing, or discarding. I just happened to have legal pads lying around.

We, as a society, are so obsessed with consumerism (duh).

Because how else are you supposed to feel legitimate if you don’t have these obscurely niche items that only people who are serious about writing have?

We are curating ourselves out of the habits and hobbies we desire. I hate to be the bearer of bad news diva, but wearing wired headphones does not make someone a more serious writer than you. Buying another journal with (cute) charms will not make you a better writer.

Only writing will do that. So grab that 10-year-old composition notebook and put your disposable pen to paper. I’m dying to hear what you have to say.