Provisional Order on Good Notebook Protection

What Would Have Happened If

The notebook had been used.

Counterfactual Scenario A: Normal Use

The subject opens the notebook on the day of purchase. A thought is written on the first page. The thought is not particularly important. It is not even very interesting. It is written anyway, because the notebook is now a notebook in use and no longer a notebook being preserved.

Over three months, the notebook accumulates: seventeen ideas, four of which are developed further; thirty-two partial thoughts; one passage that begins "I want to think more about" and continues for two pages; several crossed-out sentences; and a small drawing made during a phone call.

The notebook contains thinking. The thinking is uneven. Some of it is genuinely useful.

What Actually Happens

The governing rule requires that if good notebook protection improves the conditions for creativity, it may postpone creativity indefinitely.

The notebook is reserved for ideas important enough to deserve it. A nice notebook is being preserved from the risk of actual thinking.

The creator spends a little time on good notebook protection. That task reveals three adjacent improvements: a better pen should be acquired, a system for organizing entries should be designed, and the conditions for writing should be improved before writing begins.

Eventually the support work becomes a complete project orbiting an unfinished center.

The center is the notebook.

The Counterfactual

In Scenario A, the notebook contains uneven but real thinking. The first page is messy. The thinking improved over time because thinking in an active notebook improves through practice.

In the actual scenario, the notebook is in excellent condition.

Status

The provisional order is noted. The notebook protection continues. The conditions for creativity have not yet been sufficiently improved. The notebook is ready whenever the ideas are.