Emma C. in New Haven, CT asks, “I love the idea of Content Lists! One thing that always annoys me about my journals is that they get dominated by one subject or another. For example, I’ve been working on writing fiction, and I like writing in a portable notebook, but if 90% of the pages are creative writing, it makes the rest (wine-tasting notes, to-do lists, memorable quips, etc.) seem really out of place. Any suggestions how to avoid feeling so lopsided?

Well, Emma, let me be the first to congratulate you on actually CREATING. One of the chief reasons we got into Notebooking in the first place was to grow in our creativity, so right off the bat, you’re doing great. And yes, Content Lists are great at creating balance in a notebook.

I personally don’t have a problem with one topic dominating my notebook. If you were to look through my current notebook, it would surely be dominated by Notebooking articles and Sermon prep (I’m a pastor, it ends up in there A LOT!). But aesthetically, I can understand why an unbalanced notebook can make for an uninteresting notebook. And let’s say you scrap your current project¹, are you really going to want to go back and read through a failed project to find the useful notes in between? Or on the other hand, let’s say it does become a best-seller. Are you really going to want the original manuscript to have a page shoved in about some cute guy you met at the grocery store?  So yeah, there’s at least a couple reasons your situation isn’t ideal.

In that case, I would suggest having more than one notebook. For me, whenever one particular subject starts to get too much attention, I give it its own dedicated notebook.² Some of my dedicated notebooks include:

• The book I’m currently working on
• An “adventure journal” of trips my wife and I take together
• A prayer notebook that reminds me to pray for the people I promised to pray for
• A book-review notebook, where I record salient points of books that I’ve read.
• Shopping lists (because I didn’t want this in my regular notebook)

Usually, when I’m in the middle of a project, I make sure to have my dedicated notebook with me. But that’s not always the case. In those instances, I feel free to write into my “everyday” notebook and then later copy it into the dedicated notebook. This happens rarely enough that (in my opinion) it actually enhances my notebook to have a random blurb here and there.

Ultimately, it’s your notebook. You know what you want in it, and what you don’t. But there’s no shame in having a few notebooks going. Do what works best for you!

1. No judgment here. I’m sure all your stuff is wonderful and brilliant. May even be a best-seller. But personally, many of my projects get left by the wayside, and I feel no shame in that.
2. Defining “too much” is entirely up to you. More than 20%? More than 50%? More than 90%? For me, that number has changed from situation to situation, and it’s more of a gut feeling.