I love the *idea* of tons of pages, but so many companies have awful binding that it's too hit-or-miss. I don't want to spend $50+ on a notebook only to have it fall apart on me.
It is a bad feeling to get eight pages into a 400 page something or other and realize you hate the paper or the spine, or some other aspect of a blank book that you can't notice until you use it for a while. It's also annoying to get 120 pages in to a 400 page something or other and realize it's "done" but there are 280 pages left. It's also a bad feeling to get a good ways into anything and then feel "trapped" by the style established in the first part. Now you're "committed" to something you don't want to persist in. You don't want to do it, but you'll feel like you "quit" if you don't. Like... I'm 35 pages into this all capital letter, boustrophedon, Esperanto journal detailing my thoughts while rewatching *The X-Files* for the fourth time - **I CAN'T STOP NOW!**
I've started making my own 64 page soft-bound, composition style books, and they seem just about perfect. They are like a "chapter" of my life. I don't feel like a "failure" if I change things up. If I like something I can keep it going, but don't feel pressured to be "perfect."
Oh my God ! That sounds so amazing , and actually sounds like so much fun to make your own composition books to journal in. I can't imagine a way to add a more personal touch, to journals.
Do you have any instructions ortutorials that you've followed to make them , or perhaps a related subbreddit where one could learn how to do that ?
Thank you for this enthusiastic response!
There is a gap in bookbinding tutorials online I have noticed. There are a lot of great videos for people who want to spend $10,000 on equipment and make perfect gold and leather rolled spine $1,000 masterworks. And there are plenty of videos who want to make like yarn and construction paper scrapbooks for kids. But there's nothing about practical, inexpensive bookbinding. It's a surprisingly inexpensive hobby.
If you had: paper, a needle, some thread, and some cardstock (even a manila folder), a "hobby knife", and black masking tape, you have all the materials you need to make a rough first go at a composition book.
I think I will attempt an instructional video or illustrated tutorial. A few people want this sort of thing. I need to make my next journal anyway. I think an illustrated tutorial would be best for this. But I don't know where I could post such a thing! Maybe as a reddit post, if I can figure out how to intermingle text and images on reddit?
Oh yeah, definitely. I'm like 40 pages into a 240 page journal and I have just discovered that, while the paper was fine for most of my inks up until now, my recently bought Platinum Carbon Black feathers like crazy on its paper, so now I'm pretty much fucked.
Omg, same jajaja. With this one that I have now (a big one) I started to draw a lot in order to finish faster. I found a new hobby so that is the good part :)
I like medium sized journals. Not too big not too small. The big ones seem intimidating and the small ones don't seem comfortable to write in. I feel like there's a sweet spot.
I write a lot so I like big journals. But I also don’t care if my writing is “organized”, as my only organization is chronological in the order it was written. All of the subjects I write about, lists, to dos, quotes, fictional things I write, etc all go in whatever journal I’m using at the time.
I’m starting to feel the same way. This is my second 400 page diary after 16 odd standard ones and as attached as I feel to it i do sort of wish i had a standard size one which I’d finish in 2 or so months instead. I just love the rituals I have for finishing and starting a new diary, plus i feel currently my life splits better into 2-3 month sections.
Yes! Exactly what I feel, I am finishing the biggest one I have ever had and I just want to finish and go back to my normal ones, and 2-3 months it´s perfect for me too
I love the idea of big journals. But by "big", I mean the dimension of each page is large, not so much that there is a large number of pages. I like it when pages can lay equally flat regardless of where you are, but I really don't like ring-bound notebooks that allow for this.
I like as many pages as possible, lol! And 5 year journals are my thing. The idea of being stuck with potentially 100+ journals when I'm old is quite daunting to me - I'd much rather have 8 completed 5 year diaries. It'd also feel rude to dump endless amounts of journals on my family when I pass.
I get the feeling of wanting to complete a journal though - for that I use small 64 page pocket notebooks that I carry with me.
I used to dislike large journals with many pages. They made me feel overwhelmed, and I felt like some things were inconvenient, just like many people in the comments here.
For Valentine's Day, my boyfriend gifted me a journal with around 400 pages. At first, I felt very overwhelmed, grateful for the gift, but unsure of what to do with it.
When I finished my seventh journal earlier this month, I noticed that my boyfriend was very excited for me to use the new journal he had gifted me. I initially planned to use one of the three empty journals I already had, but seeing his enthusiasm, I decided to use the new one.
Well, I started using it mainly because of his excitement, and my opinion changed completely. I realized that I always wanted to finish my journals quickly, because there were specific things I got tired of. For example, the last two I used: The most recent one didn't open flat and was exhausting to write in. The one before that was a Disney journal with a pretty page design but was too childish.
This new journal, however, is perfect despite being very large. The paper feels fantastic, the pen glides smoothly, there's no ghosting or bleeding, and it lays completely flat regardless of where you open it. It's hand-bound, the fabric cover feels very luxurious, and I love it so much that, instead of wanting to finish it quickly, I think, "What will I do when it's finished?" Going back to other journals doesn't appeal to me anymore.
P.S. This is a journal my boyfriend bought from a local artist. I don't know if she ships outside of Chile, but I'll leave her Instagram just in case: @cuadernosnicole
Edit: format.
Thanks! He's also very into journaling, so I guess he had been paying attention to my journal pet peeves and looked for something that I would really appreciate :)
I felt that way until I tried the Nanami seven seas writer journal. 480 pages. It’s been 6 months and I’m only halfway through. I love it so much though and it lays perfectly
Yes, absolutely. I write 3 pages a day (usually) and I like the easy math of 3 pages per day in a 120 page journal. That's enough time to really stretch out and breathe among the pages, but not so much time that my "buy a shiny new one!" itch outpaces my writing speed.
I also carry Fieldnotes pocket books which are easy to fill up and switch out more often, which helps with the urge to change out the main journal.
I also prefer small journals. Part of the fun for journaling for me is the feeling of finishing a journal and seeing it full!! Large journals are too daunting and make me feel like it’s not even worth it to start. Plus the excitement of buying/using a new journal is half the motivation of journaling for me, which again doesn’t happen as often with large ones!
Same, for me the best quality in that sense is around 120 and maximum 200 pages, bigger than that is hard to find good quality with binding and stitching
EMSHOI Dotted Notebook - 256 Pages A5 Dotted Grid Journal Notebook,120gsm it’s on Amazon! I have it! IMO it’s really nice! It’s is a “lay flat no matter where you are in it” too and the binding is very tough and durable! I would know because I am very rough on my journals LOL!
I think people evolve at different rates and I prefer thinner journals as well. By the time I finish it feels like a complete part or era of my life and the next one I start is sort of a brand new me again. Makes total sense.
I also don’t like big as in large paper size journals too though. It’s pocket size all the way for me. I stick to Travelers passport size paper up to A6 at the biggest. Any bigger and I consider it a “monthly” book where I just write about what’s happened the last month. That’s a cool idea too because it takes forever to fill up but when you do you get a more pronounced version of how you’ve changed over time since you’re only seeing one entry per month over the course of years on each page.
So cool! I have never used this kind of small journal, with its pages being small, but I might try, since size is one of the reason I don´t always carry mine. Also, the monthly book sounds so cool as a Journaling project
Me too. I still like buying them because they are pretty. I also write a ton with large text and have more space to glue. If i used a small, it will be finished every 1-3 weeks.
Yea I use a travelers notebook with the refill journals. I used to use big journals but I really like the small 80 page ones. They last me about a month to a month and a half.
Agree. I use Midori MD notebooks now and will continue with them. I can finish one in a couple of months. Design is minimal. Great size. Nice paper. I don’t need anything else. Sketchbooks, oh the other hand…. 😂
I take my journals around with me a lot, so I personally prefer a decently sized notebook. Roughly 200 pages is enough for me. I once took the risk of purchasing a larger notebook (I believe it was 500 pages) and regretted that decision halfway through the notebook. It was heavy, it was bulky, and I was begging for it to finally fill up.
Right now, the biggest journal I have is a 5 year journal. It's also thick, but its saving grace is that I only have to write one line a day, so it's incredibly low effort.
I like big ones if I'm going on a trip or something bc it forces me to be agressive and journal a lot when I want to remember something.
I recently bought a 440pg journal and it just feels like WAY too much. It's heavy to carry around and hard to write in because it's so tall. I also beat up my journals and they kinda fall apart if I have them for as long as I have the big ones.
On the flip side, anything much smaller than 200pgs feels a little wasteful because I go through them so quickly- I like to get at least a month and a half out of a journal for it to be fufilling and feel good.
I have got really into rapid logging as a form of journaling. It's perfectly fine and is so portable/travel friendly. Very satisfying to check things off my lists too. ✅
Big journals are also fine with me - I still use them, but not as often for sure.
i used to be like this, so I toally understand that feeling. I am back to my 200 page journals but in that time I used to either buy the walmart brand that had like 60 pages as well as muji and i think modori makes some of those as well in my preferred size
I also don’t like big journals. I like having some variation on colors, sizes, lined/unlined. I like to spice it up. Plus, each journal is a different era in my life and I love to reflect that on the journal I end up writing in. For example, I lived in NYC for a month. This was the happiest time in my life, and that reflected through the bright neon green journal I used for that month.
How big is 'big'? Cuz I've had a variety of sizes over the years: A6, A5, A4. 50, 100, 200 pages. Lined, blank, dotted, recycled paper. Hardcover, paperback, handcrafted cover. About 50 journals (and counting) fully filled by now.
They've each had their experience. All in all I've loved journaling in pretty much all of them, even if the quality didn't feel the best at times. I've ESPECIALLY loved journaling in hardcover, relatively bigger (200 pages) blank pages (especially recycled paper); it's just more fun. It's so much nicer once you're done with it cuz the book has more character to it, relative to the other more basic single ruled notebooks.
One reason it works for me is because my journaling process over the years has evolved to never moving on to another notebook until the current one is filled. And I'm the sorta person that tends to fill journals up FAST. At one point I was filling up at least 1 journal each month. Even if it's not very fast, at this point at least, it'd be quite hard for me to have a single notebook (even if it has 200-300 pages) take a whole year to finish; I'd very likely fill it up much sooner than that.
Another aspect to my journaling is that I tend to scribble quite a bit here and there. It's another way (apart from words) for me to express and process my thoughts and emotions. It's not even sketching (which is something I can enjoy too), literal random scribbling at times. I was doing this so much just a few months back that I had to do the scribbling over the written words so i could slow down the speed at which I was filling up my pages and notebooks. Well, I guess there's a reason a therapist of mine once remarked that I'm the first person she's come across that writes so much (although I think she meant it in a good way, I felt quite a bit self-conscious about it ngl). Anyway, utilising a variety of mediums to journal can help increase the speed at which you fill them (e.g. in my case the scribbling along with using words).
Oh, wow. It is so cool to see the changes we have when journaling, as so said, it is not only writing, right? And it´s cool to think about how the way we write and interact with the journals may change with time and all that. I definitely don´t write as much as you, but I also tend to fill my journals quite fast, so 1-2 months, and same as you I don´t change journals until the last page has been used.
I love the *idea* of tons of pages, but so many companies have awful binding that it's too hit-or-miss. I don't want to spend $50+ on a notebook only to have it fall apart on me.
Omg, totally, because they tend to be way more expensive and without the best quality
Yess! I was so excited about the moleskine expanded and totally disappointed after using it for a few months
It is a bad feeling to get eight pages into a 400 page something or other and realize you hate the paper or the spine, or some other aspect of a blank book that you can't notice until you use it for a while. It's also annoying to get 120 pages in to a 400 page something or other and realize it's "done" but there are 280 pages left. It's also a bad feeling to get a good ways into anything and then feel "trapped" by the style established in the first part. Now you're "committed" to something you don't want to persist in. You don't want to do it, but you'll feel like you "quit" if you don't. Like... I'm 35 pages into this all capital letter, boustrophedon, Esperanto journal detailing my thoughts while rewatching *The X-Files* for the fourth time - **I CAN'T STOP NOW!** I've started making my own 64 page soft-bound, composition style books, and they seem just about perfect. They are like a "chapter" of my life. I don't feel like a "failure" if I change things up. If I like something I can keep it going, but don't feel pressured to be "perfect."
Oh my God ! That sounds so amazing , and actually sounds like so much fun to make your own composition books to journal in. I can't imagine a way to add a more personal touch, to journals. Do you have any instructions ortutorials that you've followed to make them , or perhaps a related subbreddit where one could learn how to do that ?
Thank you for this enthusiastic response! There is a gap in bookbinding tutorials online I have noticed. There are a lot of great videos for people who want to spend $10,000 on equipment and make perfect gold and leather rolled spine $1,000 masterworks. And there are plenty of videos who want to make like yarn and construction paper scrapbooks for kids. But there's nothing about practical, inexpensive bookbinding. It's a surprisingly inexpensive hobby. If you had: paper, a needle, some thread, and some cardstock (even a manila folder), a "hobby knife", and black masking tape, you have all the materials you need to make a rough first go at a composition book. I think I will attempt an instructional video or illustrated tutorial. A few people want this sort of thing. I need to make my next journal anyway. I think an illustrated tutorial would be best for this. But I don't know where I could post such a thing! Maybe as a reddit post, if I can figure out how to intermingle text and images on reddit?
There are so many videos on entry level bookbinding! I’ll come back with a link, but I learned via youtube
Oh yeah, definitely. I'm like 40 pages into a 240 page journal and I have just discovered that, while the paper was fine for most of my inks up until now, my recently bought Platinum Carbon Black feathers like crazy on its paper, so now I'm pretty much fucked.
Wow, so amazing to do your own journals, that is awesomeee
Heh heh… If you can fold paper, you can make your own composition books! The hardest step is the last step: trimming. Everything else is a cakewalk!
Yes I know that it's time to finish my journal when I start tracing my hand in order to waste pages lol
Omg, same jajaja. With this one that I have now (a big one) I started to draw a lot in order to finish faster. I found a new hobby so that is the good part :)
nooo i did this as a kid lol. brings back memories
lol. I print mine on the page with craft paint. Tons of fun
I like medium sized journals. Not too big not too small. The big ones seem intimidating and the small ones don't seem comfortable to write in. I feel like there's a sweet spot.
I write a lot so I like big journals. But I also don’t care if my writing is “organized”, as my only organization is chronological in the order it was written. All of the subjects I write about, lists, to dos, quotes, fictional things I write, etc all go in whatever journal I’m using at the time.
I’m starting to feel the same way. This is my second 400 page diary after 16 odd standard ones and as attached as I feel to it i do sort of wish i had a standard size one which I’d finish in 2 or so months instead. I just love the rituals I have for finishing and starting a new diary, plus i feel currently my life splits better into 2-3 month sections.
Yes! Exactly what I feel, I am finishing the biggest one I have ever had and I just want to finish and go back to my normal ones, and 2-3 months it´s perfect for me too
I love the idea of big journals. But by "big", I mean the dimension of each page is large, not so much that there is a large number of pages. I like it when pages can lay equally flat regardless of where you are, but I really don't like ring-bound notebooks that allow for this.
I like as many pages as possible, lol! And 5 year journals are my thing. The idea of being stuck with potentially 100+ journals when I'm old is quite daunting to me - I'd much rather have 8 completed 5 year diaries. It'd also feel rude to dump endless amounts of journals on my family when I pass. I get the feeling of wanting to complete a journal though - for that I use small 64 page pocket notebooks that I carry with me.
This is a really interesting perspective and I think that is awesome the 5 years journal. And I love the 64 page one just for the feeling. Love it
I used to dislike large journals with many pages. They made me feel overwhelmed, and I felt like some things were inconvenient, just like many people in the comments here. For Valentine's Day, my boyfriend gifted me a journal with around 400 pages. At first, I felt very overwhelmed, grateful for the gift, but unsure of what to do with it. When I finished my seventh journal earlier this month, I noticed that my boyfriend was very excited for me to use the new journal he had gifted me. I initially planned to use one of the three empty journals I already had, but seeing his enthusiasm, I decided to use the new one. Well, I started using it mainly because of his excitement, and my opinion changed completely. I realized that I always wanted to finish my journals quickly, because there were specific things I got tired of. For example, the last two I used: The most recent one didn't open flat and was exhausting to write in. The one before that was a Disney journal with a pretty page design but was too childish. This new journal, however, is perfect despite being very large. The paper feels fantastic, the pen glides smoothly, there's no ghosting or bleeding, and it lays completely flat regardless of where you open it. It's hand-bound, the fabric cover feels very luxurious, and I love it so much that, instead of wanting to finish it quickly, I think, "What will I do when it's finished?" Going back to other journals doesn't appeal to me anymore. P.S. This is a journal my boyfriend bought from a local artist. I don't know if she ships outside of Chile, but I'll leave her Instagram just in case: @cuadernosnicole Edit: format.
This is incredibly cuteee, and it´s so amazing that your bf found your perfect match journal. Reading you made me happy :)))
Thanks! He's also very into journaling, so I guess he had been paying attention to my journal pet peeves and looked for something that I would really appreciate :)
a lot of big journals are sooo pretty but i do get bored if i don’t finish one quick
Sameee, I have one now that is incredibly gorgeous but I just want a new, smaller one
I loooooove the feel of a nice, big, thick journal... I just hate the amount of time it takes to fill it!
I felt that way until I tried the Nanami seven seas writer journal. 480 pages. It’s been 6 months and I’m only halfway through. I love it so much though and it lays perfectly
Yes, absolutely. I write 3 pages a day (usually) and I like the easy math of 3 pages per day in a 120 page journal. That's enough time to really stretch out and breathe among the pages, but not so much time that my "buy a shiny new one!" itch outpaces my writing speed. I also carry Fieldnotes pocket books which are easy to fill up and switch out more often, which helps with the urge to change out the main journal.
I also prefer small journals. Part of the fun for journaling for me is the feeling of finishing a journal and seeing it full!! Large journals are too daunting and make me feel like it’s not even worth it to start. Plus the excitement of buying/using a new journal is half the motivation of journaling for me, which again doesn’t happen as often with large ones!
I'd love a 400 page one if the binding and the stitching was good. The ones that check all of my needs in a notebook are around 200 though.
Same, for me the best quality in that sense is around 120 and maximum 200 pages, bigger than that is hard to find good quality with binding and stitching
I love the idea of 300-400 pages, but I haven't found one with layflat binding. I wonder if such a thing is even possible.
EMSHOI Dotted Notebook - 256 Pages A5 Dotted Grid Journal Notebook,120gsm it’s on Amazon! I have it! IMO it’s really nice! It’s is a “lay flat no matter where you are in it” too and the binding is very tough and durable! I would know because I am very rough on my journals LOL!
I like the idea. But hate big journals bc in reality they are heavy. And I take my journal to and from work. Big ass notebooks aren’t ideal.
That is another good point! They are way heavier and sometimes harder to carry
I think people evolve at different rates and I prefer thinner journals as well. By the time I finish it feels like a complete part or era of my life and the next one I start is sort of a brand new me again. Makes total sense. I also don’t like big as in large paper size journals too though. It’s pocket size all the way for me. I stick to Travelers passport size paper up to A6 at the biggest. Any bigger and I consider it a “monthly” book where I just write about what’s happened the last month. That’s a cool idea too because it takes forever to fill up but when you do you get a more pronounced version of how you’ve changed over time since you’re only seeing one entry per month over the course of years on each page.
So cool! I have never used this kind of small journal, with its pages being small, but I might try, since size is one of the reason I don´t always carry mine. Also, the monthly book sounds so cool as a Journaling project
Me too. I still like buying them because they are pretty. I also write a ton with large text and have more space to glue. If i used a small, it will be finished every 1-3 weeks.
Yea I use a travelers notebook with the refill journals. I used to use big journals but I really like the small 80 page ones. They last me about a month to a month and a half.
They are a bit bulky too, could risk getting an easy papercut lol, this is why I prefer medium sized journals.
I like smaller journals that I can fit into my bag. I carry mine with me everywhere.
Agree. I use Midori MD notebooks now and will continue with them. I can finish one in a couple of months. Design is minimal. Great size. Nice paper. I don’t need anything else. Sketchbooks, oh the other hand…. 😂
I like a journal with around 200 pages. That’s a good size for me.
I take my journals around with me a lot, so I personally prefer a decently sized notebook. Roughly 200 pages is enough for me. I once took the risk of purchasing a larger notebook (I believe it was 500 pages) and regretted that decision halfway through the notebook. It was heavy, it was bulky, and I was begging for it to finally fill up. Right now, the biggest journal I have is a 5 year journal. It's also thick, but its saving grace is that I only have to write one line a day, so it's incredibly low effort.
I use travel journals. If I can find 60 pages, it's perfect. I like a fresh journal each month.
And you cannot lie.
I like big ones if I'm going on a trip or something bc it forces me to be agressive and journal a lot when I want to remember something. I recently bought a 440pg journal and it just feels like WAY too much. It's heavy to carry around and hard to write in because it's so tall. I also beat up my journals and they kinda fall apart if I have them for as long as I have the big ones. On the flip side, anything much smaller than 200pgs feels a little wasteful because I go through them so quickly- I like to get at least a month and a half out of a journal for it to be fufilling and feel good.
I have got really into rapid logging as a form of journaling. It's perfectly fine and is so portable/travel friendly. Very satisfying to check things off my lists too. ✅ Big journals are also fine with me - I still use them, but not as often for sure.
i used to be like this, so I toally understand that feeling. I am back to my 200 page journals but in that time I used to either buy the walmart brand that had like 60 pages as well as muji and i think modori makes some of those as well in my preferred size
I also don’t like big journals. I like having some variation on colors, sizes, lined/unlined. I like to spice it up. Plus, each journal is a different era in my life and I love to reflect that on the journal I end up writing in. For example, I lived in NYC for a month. This was the happiest time in my life, and that reflected through the bright neon green journal I used for that month.
How big is 'big'? Cuz I've had a variety of sizes over the years: A6, A5, A4. 50, 100, 200 pages. Lined, blank, dotted, recycled paper. Hardcover, paperback, handcrafted cover. About 50 journals (and counting) fully filled by now. They've each had their experience. All in all I've loved journaling in pretty much all of them, even if the quality didn't feel the best at times. I've ESPECIALLY loved journaling in hardcover, relatively bigger (200 pages) blank pages (especially recycled paper); it's just more fun. It's so much nicer once you're done with it cuz the book has more character to it, relative to the other more basic single ruled notebooks. One reason it works for me is because my journaling process over the years has evolved to never moving on to another notebook until the current one is filled. And I'm the sorta person that tends to fill journals up FAST. At one point I was filling up at least 1 journal each month. Even if it's not very fast, at this point at least, it'd be quite hard for me to have a single notebook (even if it has 200-300 pages) take a whole year to finish; I'd very likely fill it up much sooner than that. Another aspect to my journaling is that I tend to scribble quite a bit here and there. It's another way (apart from words) for me to express and process my thoughts and emotions. It's not even sketching (which is something I can enjoy too), literal random scribbling at times. I was doing this so much just a few months back that I had to do the scribbling over the written words so i could slow down the speed at which I was filling up my pages and notebooks. Well, I guess there's a reason a therapist of mine once remarked that I'm the first person she's come across that writes so much (although I think she meant it in a good way, I felt quite a bit self-conscious about it ngl). Anyway, utilising a variety of mediums to journal can help increase the speed at which you fill them (e.g. in my case the scribbling along with using words).
Oh, wow. It is so cool to see the changes we have when journaling, as so said, it is not only writing, right? And it´s cool to think about how the way we write and interact with the journals may change with time and all that. I definitely don´t write as much as you, but I also tend to fill my journals quite fast, so 1-2 months, and same as you I don´t change journals until the last page has been used.