I recently backed a Kickstarter for a journal aimed at enhancing the experience of writing – or at least help provide a means of organisation for notes – it’s called a PageOne, and my Kickstarter reward arrived yesterday.

Now, it may not seem to be a great or groundbreaking idea, but I found enough in the idea to put my money into – the lined journal is broken up into sections for character thumbnails, scenes, plot, research, things like that and puts me in mind of a fully bound organiser. Indeed, there are spaces for tracking submissions and other interactions, making this as much a paper-based project management tool as a creative canvas.

In software terms I’ve done similar with Scrivener, OneNote, and other online apps, but there’s something wonderfully visceral and reassuring about the heft of a journal – quite aside from not needing batteries or screens to use it.

My creative process always starts on paper anyway. I’ve tried with varying degrees of success to create from scratch digitally – and the short stories on this site are a good set of examples.

I’m more comfortable writing longhand on paper and then using the transcription process to perform a basic first edit and tidy of spelling and grammar.

The book itself is robust, with a leather-style cover as shown in the image above, and feels like the template of a classic Moleskine journal. The paper is good quality, and the printing, binding, and heft all tick the right boxes for me.

As an inveterate doodler and sketcher, it gives me the flexibility to indulge that side as part of the creative process while working through scenes – hence another reason for the many sketchpads and drawing filled journals stacked in my flat. The next time these pages appear online, they’ll be a mix of text and art.