Entry 1

8:28pm | 13^th March 2026

One: On Paper

I’ve gone analog. I can’t remember the last time I wrote in a journal by hand. Come to think of it I can’t think of a single good reason to write a thought down on actual paper in this day and age. That is, in this moment. Overall I know there is something important about it but right now the last thing I would want is to have my words be concrete, to shape them out.

It is difficult for me to write for an audience. What I really mean to say is that I don’t have the guts to do it. I don’t mind writing even though it too is difficult but writing with an audience in mind is an entirely different ordeal. I’m limited in my courage. I don’t have the guts to have my words read.

That could be one reason why I’m here. I may never have the guts, yet there is a human truth in that. Cowardice is real. I’m writing these words as an act of defiance against myself, one might say. I’m writing without courage really. It might meet me on the way. It might not. I never liked how solitary writing is yet that might just be my favorite thing about it.

I’ve named this notebook ‘Moon Book.’ My name means moonlight so perhaps I’ve named it in association to it. I haven’t been writing much for a few years now, I must confess. I used to. Creative writing used to take up every hour, every minute of my day when I was younger. I’d start writing scenes from my novel during lectures. Write quotes on bits of paper and pass them to my friends in class. If I ever came across writing I considered to be profound I’d write the words down like they’d run off if I didn’t. I don’t write anything down anymore. Since high school life has moved at the speed of light. I don’t despise this quality of life. I think I like it. I don’t like how slowly I write by hand. I can type much faster yet some part of me tells me it is necessary.

Two: A Scattered Brain

I was supposed to address the Moon Book and what I want it to be what it means to me but can I address the elephant in the room first? I hope that I am not alone in the in feeling so, I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling so, but every time I sit down to write or think my brain short-circuits. I feel an overload of sentences speaking over one another. I see snippets of scenes and characters that I never got to write about. I see backstories and character arcs. I imagine everything I have yet to create, have always wanted to create but I also see everything I want to become in the world outside of my head. This pursuit of externality I feel at times depletes the rich inner world I once had. I used to have fantastical dreams now my imagination is empty. Blank. I close my eyes and see darkness, scribbles of ink filling the page. There are no stars out.

I used to write in my journal whenever I was upset and would write until I felt better. Handwriting a few pages will tire you. I used to write novels by hand and now a few pages exhaust me.

I’ve tried to stay in touch with my creative side growing older but still, I’ve found it to be rather depleted. I find creativity to be a chore at times. Writing to be an obligation or duty as if someone had drenched all the enjoyment, the challenge out of it.

One thing that is not sitting well with me at the moment is how scattered my brain is. I’m not sure if you can tell but I’m trying to tell you five different things at once. The flow in my writing is really multi-directional-flowing. I tend to write gibberish or make up words to get something on the page before I forget what I was going to write. I’ve forgotten see, but now I remember wanting to tell you that my personal commentary on my writing is very important to me. I’m trying to improve. I’m not sure what I write like. I’m not sure about many things. Therefore, I make it a point to observe and take note as I write.

I remember now. I have to reread my writing to backtrack sometimes. I’m not bad at remembering I’m just forgetful at times. I think it has to do with working memory. My thoughts-to-write are often on queue and get withered in the process but they’re never really lost because they’re always somehow connected to a thought I’ve written down before.

That was a tangent. The word tangent itself brings up a few thoughts I wanted to note down. Last concise tangent: my thoughts can be said concisely but I have a bad case of over explaining. I’m a paragraph girl. Bite-sized poems amaze me. It’s difficult for me to fully understand what poets mean to say sometimes. I do crave understanding art and I do crave meaning. Art for the sake of sensation is something I can enjoy but pure sensation also holds meaning to me. Fun, sensation, and experience is not without purpose or function to me. Wherever I can find meaning I will shove it into the corners of my suitcase.

All this to say that in my current writing and speaking practice I am not parsimonious whatsoever. I am a yapper as we call it nowadays. I don’t consider myself a mysterious person. I don’t believe anyone would describe me as such. Talkative is more likely an adjective to come up. I’m not a huge fan of the weight of silence that’s looming over my head as I’m writing in this journal. It is, even if I have instrumental music in the background. I feel like the instruments themselves are also putting out a tune under the delusion that some soul out there will hear it. Piano sounds like that to me. It sounds alone and lonely. Desolate, like a swan looking for a lifelong mate. Don’t quote me on that. I don’t know much about swans. I don’t know much about myself or the world for that matter. I wonder, is it possible to think your whole life and never truly know? I’m fully convinced that knowing is something else. Knowing is not for the weak.

Three: Honest Art

Remember how I told you I wasn’t challenged enough in my writing. I genuinely did not reach a flow state. Academic writing is an obligation with deadlines and it is more strategy than it is an expression. Academic writing I’m comfortable doing. Imagery I don’t mind. Small snippets of reflections fine. A few paragraphs of a rant occasionally come to me. Stories I can begin but haven’t finished one in a few years now. But honest, sincere, experimental writing is somewhat beyond me.

Not long ago I learned about how crucial sincerity and honesty is to good or no not even good but quality, substantial writing. In art, good and bad writing is no longer of interest to me. Art can be many things and in this current phase of my life I want my artwork to be enjoyable and my writing to be sincere. Really I don’t mind writing, it comes easy to me but being specific and honest in my creative work is a massive challenge. I believe perhaps one can only be as true and sincere in their writings as they are with themselves in the same way one can only understand the world and others as deeply updated as they’ve come to understand themselves.

I am perhaps badly paraphrasing Tolstoy here but in his work ‘What is Art,’ he talks about how insincere art is noticeable by the reader/viewer. It not only disengages them but it is also repulsive. Performance is repulsive even if you are a brilliant performer. Perfection is overrated. Mastery is only the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps. In a way this is freeing to me yet far more difficult. All I have to do is be honest but perhaps being vulnerable, confessional to the page is the scariest thing of all. I feel especially in today’s perfectly digital, algorithmically curated world, we want to see a mess. We want to read amazing authors messiest unrevised work. We want to meet people in the process of becoming their best selves. We want to see artists long hours because we know they exist outside of their end results. I think now more than ever we want something real. Something honest.

And that is why I will not end my writing on a good-sounding rather decent-sounding conclusion. And that is why I will start my sentences with ‘and’ because in a world where AI can summarize anything in a matter of two seconds and spit it back out to you- is anyone really reading this?

Honestly I can’t say much but I want to bring long-form content back. I want to bring handwriting back. I want to use the pens I bought before the world goes entirely digital. I want to have conversations, long ones like you do with your roommate before you go to bed or on the living room floor with your college friends. I want to talk for hours on a long drive on roads that go nowhere but also to some place where the stars are always out. I want to be talked to for hours. I want the page to listen. I want you to listen. I want to listen to you. If the world is now more connected than ever why aren’t its people? Why is art no longer connecting us? How can we as artists be more sincere and point to what really matters? In a world full of chaos and noise whose voice are we going to listen to? Can we even hear it clearly? Can we think clearly? Intentionally? Empathetically?

Tangent. These are some questions I guess I’ve always been thinking about but now exist in print thanks to me writing them down. I’m not entirely sure of the answers but I guess the Moon Book is about just that: not being sure, not having the answers, not being prepared but being anyways. So I’ll be here regardless, with or without the courage to write.

Sincerely,

Mahnoor | Moon Book: Entry 1 | Metacog Moon

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Resources + Author’s Note

Resources

• Tolstoy ‘What is Art’

• “As soon as the spectator, reader, or hearer feels that the author is not writing, singing, or playing for his own satisfaction – does not himself feel what he wishes to express – but is doing it for him, the receiver, a resistance immediately springs up, and the most individual and the newest feelings and the cleverest technique not only fail to produce any infection but actually repel.”
• “By words a man transmits his thoughts to another, by means of art he transmits his feelings.”
• “#2. Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind of relationship both with him who produced, or is producing, the art, and with all those who, simultaneously, previously, or subsequently, receive the same artistic impression.”

• Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow State

Mahnoor’s Note: italicized words/lines depict my thoughts on my thoughts and/or observations on the writing itself. I sometimes also use it to bring to my own attention what I learned about myself or ideas within a piece of writing. If you’ve read till here, I want to thank you and invite you to be a part of this Moon Book series in which I write in a stream of consciousness manner. I also invite you to join Metacog Moon as a whole and be part of a community of creative experimentation. This is my first entry in the Moon Book and want to once again sincerely thank you for taking the time out to read.