The Couch Book: A 2014 Challenge

I have too many notebooks to count. Some are filled in their entirety. Others have a page or two with jotted notes. Some have pages torn from their spine.

When it comes to notebooks, I am only consistent in my addiction to acquiring them. They are tchotchkes: quaint items on a shelf I admire from afar. When I make notes for works-in-progress, I most often do so at the keyboard. I admire the art of handwriting, but I revel in the speed of my fingers on keys.

I’m always interested in twists and tricks to help my creative process, so for 2014 I am setting a goal. Not a resolution, but a goal that should be within my reach.

I’ve selected a spiral-bound hardcover notebook that I have deemed The Couch Book. I will place this notebook in my usual comfort corner, where I end the day resting up, sipping coffee, and watching mindless television with my spouse. While I have an awful time trying to read (meaningfully) whilst the television is on, I have found it possible for me to make little notes: grocery lists, to-do lists, random bursts of phrasing that may prove useful in a wip.

My goal for the year is to use The Couch Book on a daily basis, with no set goal of time or line length, to write something other than lists. I’m curious to see what ideas come out of committing to writing in a notebook for one year. My hunch is that without direction, without intent, and without those rules we so often impose on our creative writing time, I may see some organic growth in the idea department.

This is nothing new. Lovely, well-versed, and well-published authors claim so often how the journaling process works wonders for them. It is not my intent to journal, but it is my intent to see what happens when you take a pen and notebook out of the working, must-be-creating mindset and into the comfort of the couch.

all in a day’s mindset: tackling the to-dos

I’m a nerd. A to-do list nerd, especially. I like having a focus—or several—for the day and earning that sense of satisfaction when things get checked off the list.

Yet I’m continually refining the art of to-do list making. I go back and forth between paper and pen lists versus the kind I make in a Word document. Or a bullet point list on my phone. The tactile pleasure of the pen and paper route is great. There’s an added sense of accomplishment in physically striking something off the list. But the computer document has a great function, too, if I don’t let it get out of control: I can amend the day’s to-dos as I move along.

Where the computer doc causes trouble is two-fold: 1) I can continually add to-dos to the day, thus making it impossible to truly accomplish everything and 2) I tend to erase what I have accomplished, so at the end of the day all I see is what I haven’t done.

So I did an experiment this week (as I tend to do such things). I made a new document of to-dos and every time I completed a task, I crossed it out—rather than deleted the item. This was a test to see if I actually found more satisfaction in seeing what’s been done for the day. The result? Sure. There was some joy in seeing checked off items.

The real result, though, is the realization that no matter how I project my day’s activities, I always set overachieving goals. For whatever reason, I can’t bring myself to list just one or two things to do in a day. I aim high, do my best, and push the rest to the next day, or the next. It’s how I operate. And that’s okay. For me, it works. 

I love fantasizing about a super-organized life. One that has a place for everything, and where everything is in its place. One that has a to-do list of achievable goals for each day, and that’s checked off in true Martha Stewart fashion. But I’m not Martha. I’m me. Chaotic, imperfect, organized-in-my-own-dysfunctional-way me. And that’s a good thing.