How a Notebook Changed My Life: Introducing Willow Lane
I was eight years old. I had just spent 50c of my pocket money on a little spiral-bound notebook. It was one of those reporter types, portrait orientation with binding across the top. The ones where you flip the page over the top of the notebook to get to a new page. I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but I knew I wanted that notebook.
I remember standing in our little olive green dining room with the tiny veneer table (all very fashionable in the 70s and early 80s). My dad was there, standing beside me near the window, having just come from the joining kitchen, and I showed him the notebook.
As a writer, he rather liked it, and I think he was impressed that of all the things I could spend my precious pocket money on, I bought that. I remember clearly he said, looking down at me, “What are you going to do with that? Write a novel?”
And something switched on inside me. It was literally like a light came on in my head to illuminate a new, unforeseen option. My brain just went, “Yes.”
“Yes, that is EXACTLY what I am going to do with it. I am going to write a novel.”
I lay down on my stomach on the floor of my bedroom, a pencil in hand, and began to write a fantasy novel. I have been writing fantasy novels ever since.
That little notebook changed my life. It was a doorway to a whole world of potential within me I didn’t know was there. It set the course of my life.
Since that day, I have been passionate about notebooks. I would collect a gazillion of them if I could. It’s not even using them. It’s owning them. It’s the unlimited, untapped potential in each one.
Any one of them could be a way to heal, a way to collect memories, a way to record dreams, a way to unlock a story within me, a way to gather quotes and tidbits. It might be a creative outlet or it might be functional. It might be personal or it might be business. Each of them is that doorway. Sometimes I know much of what is on the other side of that doorway because I chose that book for a purpose. Sometimes that doorway opens to whole new adventures and roads I never knew were there.
I genuinely believe a notebook can change a life because it changed mine.
My sister, Naomi, also has a long-standing passion for notebooks. She too finds they can open up whole new adventures and possibilities within her. Like me, she knows first-hand that a notebook can genuinely change a life.
And that’s why we are both beginning a new venture. I give to you:
WILLOW LANE
Notebooks & Journals
Willow Lane is a totally natural almost seamless progression from the kinds of projects Naomi and I have always done together. We are an artist (and writer plus photographer) and a designer, and we have worked on many books from concept to publication. We just seem to know where the skills of one of us ends and the other’s begins.
We work well together and have been partners in everything ever since the manuscript Bloodline: Alliance first went to Naomi as a huge stack of paper to see what she thought of the book. She has always been Jonathan to my David, the wind beneath my wings. But this time, she is taking her place at centre stage. She is half of what will make Willow Lane the amazing and wonderful adventure that it is sure to become. My art, her designs.
Willow Lane is the place where our art and design meet.
We have been working behind the scenes the last six months to create a series of high end notebooks with the goal of inspiring the world one notebook at a time. So far it has been a passion project and every notebook has been designed with joyful deliberation. We are going to create a small but growing list of books, adding several carefully-chosen notebooks and journals to our list each year.
All our books will be:
- A5 size. 5.5’x8.5’
- Hardcover
- Cream paper 90GSM
- 160 pages.
- Lined with generous margins for extra notes, doodles and more.
- Beautifully designed back and front, some with full original artwork that wraps the whole cover.
- Either plain inside or have a small themed motif at the bottom of each page.
They will have wider lines for:
- Bigger handwriting
- Those who love swirly cursive
- Doodlers and scribblers
- Or just for that uncluttered feel of white space. (We love white space in our journals. It’s like room to think and breathe.)
Willow Lane notebooks are out now. Some are printed and posted through Amazon or you can buy the full range through this site.
{UPDATE: We have now expanded into cards, gifts and even stationery. We have been working hard to create a large and diverse range of products and styles that is a joy to explore and to choose from. We plan on adding many more products so keep coming back to see us or subscribe to our blog for behind-the-scenes news on art and books and notifications of some of our new products.]
About the Author: Lisa Saul
