Wherever I go, whatever bag I’m carrying, I always have a small notebook with me.

It’s recycled brown craft paper, with plain pages; small, about A6, and dog-eared. Unremarkable, and of huge creative value to me.

Inside, the pages are covered with lines of text, copied out in scrawled handwriting, from whatever source I’ve taken them. They run in all directions across the paper, some have small doodles at the end of the sentence. Some pages are covered from top to bottom in closely packed print; some have a single line that leaps from the blank space on the paper. (Some pages have been well-thumbed, and are stuck to the middle of the book with Sellotape.)

The lines are taken from anywhere, with the single thread running through that all of the text has, at some point and on some level, spoken to me. They’ve come from novels I’ve read, magazine articles I’ve skimmed, tweets I’ve enjoyed, half-formed thoughts I’ve had and scenes I’ve observed while walking home late at night. (An easy way to tell how much I’ve enjoyed a book these days is the number of pages of a novel folded at the corner, ready for me to easily revisit and transcribe.)

Some are full sentences; some are snatches of text, half-phrases where a couple of words rang true; some whole paragraphs; and some are merely the definitions of words I didn’t previously know, but having taken the time to look them up and note them down, I now notice everywhere I go.

As well as keeping track of lines of literature I’ve loved, the book provides a wealth of creative inspiration. Going back and flicking through the pages, I revisit personal highlights of the work of favourite authors without taking the time to read the whole book. And seeing some gems juxtaposed with others that would never otherwise have come crashing up against them can spark an idea that takes on a new direction altogether.

It’s such a small thing, of no aesthetic or monetary value, yet its worth to me is far more than its scruffy pages and scratchy handwriting could ever suggest.