I don't know if this is necessarily true or not, but I've heard it said that a writer is only as good as his notebook.  Julia Cameron, who is the author of "The Artist's Way" believes that it is imperative to use a cheap, spiral notebook to write your "Morning Pages"- three long-hand pages of stream of consciousness.

In "Writing Down the Bones", Natalie Goldberg writes about writing journals in tons of cheap, spiral notebooks as an important part of her writing process. She contends that if the journal is too pretty, she won't be able to purge her mind of the crap that is cluttering it.

I find that each kind of journal that I use to write in changes the way I think. Over the years, I've accumulated a multitude of spiral notebooks, several hard and soft-bound journals with various patterns on them, and WAY too many little notebooks just in case I get an idea while "on the road".

While there is some mulching material in my spiral notebooks, most of what I've written hasn't proven to be all that useful in the long run. Because of the 8 x 11 inch size, the notebooks take up too much space and I always end up using them for grocery lists or other nonsense, so I decided to scale down by using one or two small notebooks at a time (instead of 27) and a journal for my mulching material.

I recently started using Moleskin notebooks, which are highly recognized as the end-all be-all in the world of notebooks. (If in fact there is even a world of notebooks). I picked up a package of three, small Moleskine notebooks, which are lined with graph paper. At first, I was highly organized with each notebook- each notebook had a specific purpose designated by the cover, which I personally designed with stickers from the fruits and vegetables lying around the house.

I was skeptical about how useful the Moleskine notebooks would be or if they would be worth the extra cash, but now I'm a true believer- I'm a Moleskin convert.

I don't know why or how it works, but when I use my Moleskin notebooks to prioritize my tasks, write story ideas, or write short segments, my thoughts come out much more organized and focused than usual, despite the fact that I don't always strictly adhere to my own organizational system. I believe that my thinking processes have benefited from writing on graph paper, but I haven't been able to find any evidence to support my hypothesis, yet.

When I write on larger notebooks without lines, my ideas come out in a torrent and creativity ensues, but smaller notebooks give me a different kind of thinking.  What's your notebook of choice?