Moleskin Notebooks & Coffee Shops Are The Enemy Of Good Writing

You're not going to like this. But I am right.

A Moleskin notebook will cost $20 which is about the same price as a hardback book that and author and editors and designers have pored over for months or years. Moleskin is not selling you a product as much as it is selling you a sensation; that you feel like a writer. And you should be suspicious of feeling like a writer.

One piece of advice I often give to aspiring writers is to avoid using fancy notebooks or beautiful pens. These tools, while aesthetically pleasing, can distract from the true purpose of writing. It’s easy to become so engrossed in the tactile experience of writing—the smooth flow of ink on quality paper—that we lose sight of the work's substance. There’s a seductive pleasure in writing with these tools that can lead to a false sense of accomplishment. The act of writing feels good, so we might convince ourselves that the words are good as well. Yet when we come to read back our words, or type them up into a document we realize, the sensations were lying to us.

Our feelings can often serve as a thermometer for the quality of our work, but they aren’t always reliable. It’s easy to mistake the enjoyment of the writing process for the value of the work itself. For me, the excitement should come from the ideas and the words themselves, not from the tools used to produce them. And this is why I avoid coffee shops…