Levenger's Circa notebook system

Are you an organizer junkie? I am, but for an organizer junkie I can be appallingly disorganized at times. Until now, no system I found was perfect for me. If I used a physical organizer, it usually got left behind when I went somewhere — and that was sure to be the occasion when I had to write down an appointment. I developed a habit of solving the immediate problem by emailing myself a reminder to note the appointment time, using Jotter, an app on my phone. And Jotter IS a lifesaver if you get caught somewhere without your calendar. But the Jotter system can get overwhelming very fast if you get a lot of email. Besides, I cannot email myself a piece of paper that comes home from school or arrives in the mail unless I scan it (though I’m proud to say I will often manage to do exactly that).

There had to be a better way, and I think I have discovered it: Levenger’s Circa notebook system. Circa notebooks are physical notebooks that do have to be carried around. But what made this system workable for me are the following two features:

1. Circa works like a spiral notebook, with one crucial difference: you can buy a Circa desktop punch and punch ANY piece of paper and put it into a Circa notebook of ANY size. I can punch sticky notes, if need be, and toss them in my Circa notebook. (You have no idea how liberating that is!) I can punch random little pieces of paper that have website login names and passwords on them, and toss them in my notebook.

2. If you start with one of Levenger’s starter Circa kits, you’ll have a large Circa and a small Circa notebook. The small notebook was what did it for me — it will fit in a purse or briefcase and it’s the right size to hold all my current notes to myself. (The Circa starter kits, by the way, are well worth it because Levenger will enclose a gift card worth the price of the starter kit — they are that sure that you’ll get addicted.)

I found I became much more addicted to the smaller size Circa than the larger one, but I have the larger one set aside for a special purpose: it’s the right size to become a blogging calendar once I print out my blogging schedule.

I rarely post reviews or endorsements on this site, but this tool, because it is so affordable and so endlessly customizable, is one I think all writers should continue adding to their repertoire — especially if you’re one of those people, as I am, who is constantly thinking of ideas and desperate to find a way to make sure those ideas get acted upon rather than lost forever.

Sometimes, the moon does follow you.

Think about that for a few minutes and you’ll see why Alexie classifies this as a horror story!

As an aside, I should note that if you want to write, you should consider studying Sherman Alexie. If you are short on time, register for a Twitter account and simply study his tweets, which are often poetic and almost always provide a brilliant example of efficiency in writing. Like a poem, a well written tweet packs a lot of content into a very small space.

Which is what I am about to ask you to do.

Consider the genre of horror. I don’t think of myself as a horror fan, yet there are some authors I read, such as Neil Gaiman, who are famous for specializing in horror (even though that’s not why I read them!). If you read a horror scene in a horror or non-horror book, you’ll find that the most horrific scenes are not particularly graphic. They leave most of the horror to your imagination, like a literary version of the famous shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s movie Psycho (or any of the most suspenseful scenes in any Hitchcock film–try Rear Window, for instance).

Any details that are being left to the reader’s imagination do not have to be written by you. Yes, it’s lazy writer day here at Ready to Write. We like it when the reader’s imagination gets to do all the work and the writer gets to relax and sip her coffee!

So, lazy writers, what I want from you is six words that depict something scary or horrible in just a few short strokes–short enough to publish on Twitter (in fact, tweet your responses if you like! Twitter is a great way to self-publish: immediate, free, and you often get great feedback, not to mention fans).

If you need more inspiration, try the following sites:
“Very short stories.” Wired. Nov. 2006.
“Six word horror stories–staff written.” Flash Fiction. Oct. 30, 2009.
“Six word stories–Scary.” (From the Six Word Story site)

Please post your stories in the comments section below.

I am dying to see them.

Get it? That was a six-word horror story right there! But I know you can do better. Ready, set, go!

P.S. I wrote a blog post on my Evernote/Clearly process for HubPages, so if you would like it see the process broken down in a step-by-step format, just click on my HubPages link on the left side of the screen.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

–C.S. Lewis

I like that one. But I like this one even better:

Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.

–Howard Aiken

Well, no more of that nonsense. One day I was inspired to buy a small, pocket-sized spiral notebook. I designated the book my “phone journal,” but it soon became much more: the repository of all the scraps of information that I used to lose. I adopted a simple system. I dated each entry. If the notes were related to a phone conversation, I noted who I was talking to. (I went a little crazy taking notes on every conversation, including non-work-related conversations–hey, it helped me listen better. I am not an auditory learner–I can’t be sure I’ll remember something until I write it down.) If the notes pertained to something I was supposed to do, such as information I needed to add to my calendar or address book, or a task I needed to do, I crossed off each task once it was completed. I used a simple diagonal slash across the area of the page on which I had written the task, so that if I needed to later, I could still read what was written there.

A phone journal seems like such a simple innovation, but I have found that this technique is life-changing (at least for those of us with suspected adult ADD!). I’m just not into cute organizational systems. I am not motivated to color code and cross-reference. I have to keep things simple.

A small spiral notebook is about as simple as it gets. One notebook, one pen. It can’t fall behind my desk. It can’t help but be in one easy to follow order: chronological order. All I have to do is write down the same notes that I was already writing down and losing — only now I’m not losing them.

Sometimes, the answer to a productivity problem is not a new gadget or piece of software. Sometimes, the answer is more old-fashioned. No, I can’t sync my notebook to the Cloud. But if I lose it, am I screwed? Not really. Almost all the information in my phone journal is there for one of two purposes: a) to help me pay attention while I’m talking on the phone and b) to help me remember to do something. Once I’m done with the phone call, the paying attention problem is solved. The “to do list” function of the notebook is the only part that I could lose if I lost the book, but that’s usually just a matter of the last two or three entries, and I generally have other reminders coming if I lose my scrap of paper (oh, not to worry–I have other systems in place, set up from the days of relying on not-so-sticky notes!).

I know there are new versions of sticky notes out there now. There are super-sticky notes with glue that just won’t become unsticky and fall down. There are sticky note software programs that allow you to pin sticky notes to your computer desktop, or to actual electronic files, where they won’t fall off. But I am going to stick (no pun intended) with my notebook. It still allows me to experience the satisfaction of writing with pen on paper — and it keeps me organized like no other tool ever has.

But please comment: do sticky notes work for you, or have you replaced them with something entirely different?