Space for ideas
Her notebooks are Cornelia's greatest treasure. She fills them with everything that inspires her - texts, photos, drawings, all kinds of inspiration. Until she can see, smell, and hear her story's characters and settings.
Maybe Cornelia would never have found out how much better it is to write the first draft by hand, if her son had not suggested travelling to Madagaskar.
Her notebooks help her working on multiple stories at the same time. For some stories she filled 30 notebooks with sketches and ideas.
For her book "The Griffin’s Feather", for example, she had one book for notes, thoughts, and sketches before she started, and then another six for the handwritten first draft and the print out of the second draft. She more and more sketches characters and places while she is writing. It can be so inspiring for her (and makes much more beautiful notebooks).
"I don’t know what I would do without them. I have always enjoyed writing. Now I’m celebrating it and it satisfies all my senses. Besides, nothing gets lost anymore. The notebooks show, how an idea develops into a finished story."
