What Where When How

Over at An Awfully Big Blog Adventure today - http://awfullybigblogadventure.blogspot.com/ -
Sue Purkiss showed us pictures of her notebooks. They are beautiful things, with bright colours and designs. I wanted to stroke them!
My first thought was how dull I felt by comparison. Here on my desk are mine: plain black, Moleskin, the sort that wrap round with an elastic. The elastic is the most important part! I do occasionally put loose sheets in but clearly, as I posted over there, it is more my wild thoughts that need containing and controlling.
Now like most writers, I have a passionate relationship with stationery. Even now, working almost entirely on computer, I look at notebooks, yearn over the feel of a page, study the width of the lines, and the flexibility of the cover, never mind the design that prompted me to pick it up in the first place ... so there must be a reason I choose plain black.
I can only think it's because of the absolute simplicity of it. It says nothing which allows me to say anything. If I had a red leather cover or a woven silk Japanese design, it would set my mood before I even opened the pages.
All my ideas go into these plain black books. Yet my YA novel plans are in a vivid turquoise blue - slim, bendy and no band. I knew it was a departure but the colour overcame me and plannng this book felt like an adventure, a reckless attempt at something new rather than a steady noting of ideas for viable, sellable magazine fiction.
And of course I always used to write in ink. Until my constantly leaking ink pens let me down and I toured the supermarket one day with a blue nose. Black gel pens just about give me that same smooth flow across the page, but it's never quite as satisfying as ink.
How you write, where you write, with what, on what - it shouldn't matter so much but it clearly does.