Making room for creative pages

We are taught to use notebooks efficiently — neat headings, tidy lists, nothing wasted. But creativity rarely works that way.

Try keeping a few pages free of rules. Sketch shapes, collect words you like, paste in a ticket or a pressed leaf. Let the page be a place to play rather than perform.

Margins are where ideas go to stretch.

A dot-grid or plain notebook makes this easier, giving structure when you want it and freedom when you don't. Over time, these loose pages often become the most interesting ones to revisit.