It is a Wednesday. It is Halloween. And it is the day before PiBoIdMo2012.

Open Mind – check

New Pencils, pens – check

Picture books to inspire – check

And finally the special notebook that I will carry around in November for jotting down ideas – CHECK!!!

The notebook needs to be accessible. Easy to use. I prefer big gaps between lines. I don’t like narrow lines.

It has to be a size that can fit into my bag. Even the smallest one.

And it has to inspire. It has to allow me to doodle, scratch, jot and generally be creative, in a untidy kind of way.

I don’t want something precious and gold-embossed that I can’t even write on it, without worrying about dirtying it.

I don’t want something so cheap that writing on it is not a pleasure.

And I looked into my big box of blank notebooks and rummaged around.

Big fat notebook that I can’t fill up in a month – not good.

Notepads where the sheets come off too easily – not good.

Very small notebooks where doodling will fall of the page – not good.

And then I found it.  A note-book that I bought in Berlin two years ago. A notebook that is the perfect size and the spacing between lines. Yes! Let me have that one please…..

So this is what I did to it – put my PiBoIdMo 2012 logo on it. Put my name and address on it. Please return it if I do manage to lose it. You might have to put a gun to my head for me to part with  my idea notebooks, generally.

So here I am waiting for the dark night of Halloween to descend and pass, so I can enter the fun world of picture books, bright, cheerful and gorgeously hilarious.

Let the mayhem begin!