Lately, I feel like my relationship is missing something. Oh, we get along most of the time. We manage to work together, get done what needs to be done, coexist without too much disagreement.

But the spark that used to flare between us is gone.

So I bought something  that I hope will give us a reason to spend more time in one another’s company—not just for the work we have to do, but to rediscover all the fun times we used to have. The magic we used to create together.

I’m talking, of course, about my relationship with writing. As a professional writer and editor, I’ve made my living with words for 25 years. But most of the time, those words were written for someone else. Work for hire—magazines, content marketing, website copy, newsletters, and solicitation emails. Even when the work allows me to flex my creativity a little, it still isn’t work that is coming from within the chambers of my own heart. I write for a brand, not for me.

As the years go by, I’ve found it harder and harder to reach those places in my heart. Even when I’m working on projects for myself and not for someone else, it’s challenging to think of writing as something I do for fun, just for the joy of telling stories, of expressing myself through words.

Last year, I made a decision that one of my goals would be to develop my relationship with writing. The first big step towards this was making space in my life for writing—both physically and temporally. I have managed to do both, with dedicated writing spaces and time set aside each day for personal writing, at least a little bit.

Now I am ready to take the next step, which is to rediscover the romance of writing again. That’s why I got this notebook. Writing by hand takes me back to my most creative periods—like when I wrote a whole novel by hand in a couple of Moleskine notebooks. Or the brief period when I free wrote mini-stories from prompts every morning before work.

There is something freeing about writing by hand. The thoughts and words come flowing out without restriction. When you get into a good rhythm it’s almost like they are coming from somewhere else entirely. From the heart, not the head.

This book is not a journal. Journaling is so valuable, and I have several different journaling practices that nurture my soul and my writing in different ways. But journaling is private, not meant for anyone else’s eyes, and if thoughts wander from topic to topic, artless, erratic, honest, and unrefined, then who’s to judge?

Journaling is unraveling. All those thoughts and feelings and inner worlds dropped onto the page, brought out where I can see them, understand them. Start to make sense of them.

This book is for composition, the opposite of unraveling. It’s for picking up all those unraveled bits and weaving them into something purposeful. It might be a story. It might be an essay. It might be scripts for videos (the first draft I wrote in this book is the script for this video). All the things that require purpose and consciousness and deliberation, as I try to make words say the things I want to say.

I want a book for it, so that, writing by hand, I can tap into that heart-space that has felt so far out of reach for much too long. I want something fountain-pen friendly but not too precious, so that I don’t mind the messy scrawl my handwriting becomes when I am trying to keep up with my thoughts, or worry about crossing things out or making edits as I go along, pushing myself to find something a little more meaningful. A little more artful. And it needs to be sturdy, a think plastic cover that will withstand the rough world when I take it places.

Because I do want to take it places.

I want to take it on dates. Go on long walks holding hands. Tell it how much I love it beneath the light of a full moon, as it helps me to remember what it feels like to be in love, passionately, desperately, wildly in love with my writing.

This essay was originally published as a video on YouTube. Watch it there.