You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone, says Joni, and she’s right. I have scoffed at notepadded people in the past, those who can’t do anything without writing bullet points and mind maps that make them look organised. I’ve thought it just a charade to make others feel inferior. ”Think you’re a genius,” they seem to say, ”well where’s your notepad? Not taking this seriously, are you? If you were, you’d be summarising furiously, like me.”
Nope, never bought it. The notepadders are no richer, wiser or sexually promiscuous than me. Don’t get me wrong: I try to have a notepad with me at all times, but that is for capturing ideas rather than planning out things you can do perfectly well off the cuff.
However, this week I forgot to take my notepad to an edit. Mistake. I’ve come to realise how mightily the notepad contributes, especially when dealing with long interviews that you have to turn into a natural-sounding conversation a third of the length. I realise now that I’ve been weilding my notepad like Excalibur, cutting images with the confidence and precision of King Arthur beheading a heathen.
Now, without it, I am a diminished swordsman, hacking and slashing my way through the vastness of a dragon’s belly, blind to the intricacies of anatomy that would fell the beast with a few choice incisions. Bathed in blood and bile, my stabbing is ineffectual, amateur, infantile, and I don’t like it. I miss the heady feeling of mastery that courses so consistently through my veins that I had stopped noticing it. I miss the moments of magic, where I conjure miracles before awe-struck directors, hitherto despairing that the edit was doomed. I miss my mojo, godammit!
So, (mental) note to self: remember your notepad tomorrow.