Margin, essays by June Ash
EssaysAbout
From the current essay
On keeping a notebook
nobody will read.
The notebook on my desk has one reader, and she is not impressed. I have kept one since 20091, through four countries and two careers, and the single rule that survived is this: write the day before judging it. Every system I tried that was cleverer than that2 collapsed within a season.
What the notebook is for, I have decided, is not memory but manners: it teaches you to notice. The entries that embarrass me most are the ones that matter3, which is how I know the practice is working.
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1
Sixty-one notebooks, one shoebox, no index. The shoebox is the index.
2
Bullet journals, Zettelkasten, an app with a mascot. The mascot won, briefly.
3
See “On rereading yourself,” essay 14, which took three drafts to admit this.
Table of contents
17
On keeping a notebook nobody will read
2026
16
The case for slow email
2026
15
Walking as an editing technique
2025
14
On rereading yourself
2025
One essay a month, by email, no more often than that.
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Margin is written by June Ash and published from a small desk in Devon.
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