This week I have been working on a new collection of notebooks specifically aimed at writers. Being an author myself (PetraKidd.com), I really do know the value of having a good notebook to hand to make sure ideas never go astray.
I love a notebook to be tactile and easy to write in. Good quality paper that helps the ink glide is a must too! There is a certain pleasure in seeing characters, plots and random thoughts laying within a notebook in my own handwriting. It is too easy to lose the art of handwriting if you don’t use it everyday. I spend an inordinate amount of time tapping away on my Mac so it is refreshing to physically jot characters, plots and new story ideas in my notebooks.
With my scatter brain, if I open new files on my computer or phone to record notes, I often forget what I named the document or where I filed it and I end up wasting time trying to find it again. On the whole, I am pretty organized, but it is easy to get distracted and lose things in the millions of folders set up to make life easier!
My notebooks solve this problem, or at least they do for me, so they may do the same for you. I find it much easier to find what I am looking for in a notebook and somehow, seeing it in my own handwriting makes it more personal. It’s lucky I don’t have handwriting like most doctors!
This new trio of writer’s notebooks have a writer’s quote on the inner front page and 160 lined pages inside. Simple and effective.
I hope you will enjoy using them if you decide to get one for yourself. The images on the cover are by @MyriadLifePhotoArt (yep I am also a photographer). Lately, I have been enjoying more black and white photography so I thought I’d use it for this series. I like the simplicity and the idea of thoughts and ideas flowing like the tide. The swan is to symbolize new ideas taking off for a ‘work in progress.’ The grey is for the grey matter in our brains that we use to form genius thoughts and create stories.
You can buy a writer’s notebook by clicking on the images above and below.
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Creative thoughtsWork in progressNovel ideas
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Norfolk UK is my home, I live in Norwich by the River Wensum where everyday there is something different to see and learn.
I feel a big affinity with the river as I grew up in Cambridge, another great river city. My childhood and teens involved many walks along the Cam where we would watch 'The Bumps,' raft races and as we grew older we enjoyed adventures on our punting pub crawls.
Growing up in a multi cultural university city definitely influenced my reading choices, I am a big fan of Japanese fiction, love French literature and enjoy Shakespeare. As a young teen I entertained myself with Jilly Cooper and Dick Francis and then became quite obsessed with Henri Charriere's Papillon. At school all I cared about was English, Art and French, in that exact order. When I finished with school I went to live and work in Greece for a wonderful year before returning to study English Literature and Sociology. At this point I read more classics like the Wyf of Bath, Wuthering Heights and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man plus poets such as Wilfred Owen.
My first UK full time job was with Heffer's Paperbacks where I devoured several books at a time, excited by the fact I could borrow what I liked. Bizarrely for me I remember reading The Zurich Axioms, I have no interest in the stock markets but it had me gripped. I can't remember why I picked it up but I have never forgotten it. Heffers introduced me to so many authors, via their books and sometimes in person. It was here I learned about all the genres, it fascinated me that science fiction and horror were so popular, I tried reading it all.
Aside from writing letters, it didn't really ever occur to me to write anything myself for many years as I worked my way through a variety of interesting and varied jobs. Then on a visit to the London Aquarium I became struck by an idea so powerful I sat down and wrote my first novel. It went nowhere as really I wrote it because I wanted to. I wrote another novel and again, didn't have the persistance or determination to take it further, I simply enjoyed the process of writing and my characters.
Then years later another idea struck me and during a severe bout of Pleurisy where I couldn't do anything physical for months, I wrote the Eight of Swords and The Putsi. This time I published them as ebooks and they became pretty popular. When I fully recovered, I had to concentrate on my business and looking after my mother who has various health issues and the writing went adrift again for many years until 2020 when the Coronavirus pandemic hit the world.
March 2020 I moved to my apartment alongside the Wensum to live alone for the first time ever. During the first lockdown I began to write a diary and then the idea for a new set of short stories came to me and in February 2021 they will be published. The Covid-19 Pandemic is not simply a scary virus, it is a historical time and here we are trying to live through it. To many it will feel like a punishment but to me as a writer, in some ways, it came as a gift.
Please stay as safe and as well as you can. I hope to entertain you with my stories as we all try to get through this together, even though we are apart.
Petra
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