The Gathering of Random Thoughts In Your Writer's Notebook
Renowned Australian author, Helen Garner uses the term ‘Notes: aimless' to denote the jotting down of thoughts in her writer’s notebook. These are the thoughts that sprout persistently in the inevitable cracks between writing projects. They appear sometimes as lists of scribbled possibilities. Sometimes the noted ideas are related, at other times they possess no obvious connection to one another - a smattering of brain activity is captured in hope and expectation. I am aware of this phenomenon being present in my own writing process. When rereading older notebook entries, I encounter such notations and find myself speculating over what may have provided the initial spark of motivation. I start to consider the thought that brought such words to the notebook page in the first place. Rereading them is now surrounded with an air of mystery, sometimes even strangeness. I think of these entries as random, but I don’t view them as being aimless. I refer to them as ‘random thought