Every day for over a decade, Orhan Pamuk has written and drawn in his notebooks. Translated into English for the first time, these stunning snapshots of his life and creative process are a wonderful accompaniment to his bestselling works of fiction.

They include daily events and reflections, dialogues with his imagined characters, notes on his works-in-progress, his experience of writer’s block and the unfolding of his difficulties with the current Turkish government. Each entry is illustrated in the author’s uniquely idiosyncratic and charming style.

In this extract from Memories of Distant Mountains, Pamuk explains where his notebooks began, and how and why he blends writing with drawing.

I should really write about the pleasures of inscribing words over paintings. So here I am, writing: Between the ages of 7 and 22, I thought I was going to be a painter. At 22, I killed the painter inside of me and began writing novels. In 2008, I walked into a stationery shop, bought two big bags of pencils, paints, and brushes, and began joyfully and timidly filling little sketchbooks with drawings and colors. The painter inside of me hadn’t died after all. But he was full of fears and terribly shy. I made all my drawings inside notebooks so that nobody would see them. I even felt a little guilty: surely this must mean I secretly deemed words insufficient. So why did I bother to write? None of these inhibitions slowed me down. I was eager to keep drawing, and drew wherever I could.

I should create an EXHIBITION—ANTHOLOGY—OF PAINTINGS INSCRIBED WITH WORDS . . . featuring examples from every culture around the world. OF COURSE FINDING ALL THESE EXAMPLES . . . and selecting the best ones will take time.

I started writing in this notebook in 2009. I didn’t just write about my day and my thoughts. Sometimes my hand would start drawing of its own accord. There was a page for each day. I would try to keep the writing and drawings small so that they would fit. But some days a single page wasn’t enough to contain all the incidents, words, and images I wished to record. From 2012 onward, I began to write and draw even more, filling two notebooks every year.

Moving on to two notebooks a year in 2012 gave me many more blank pages to draw on and fill up. Since 2009, I’ve been carrying these notebooks with me wherever I go. This is how I began taking notes not just with words, but with drawings too. I have been constantly writing things down in these notebooks, and occasionally drawing in them too, in waiting rooms, on trains, in the metro, at cafés and restaurant tables. Back home I would then color in my pencil drawings like a little boy. “You’re just like the miniaturists in My Name Is Red!” people would say when they saw my notebooks. “All these tiny drawings, how lovely! How do you find the time?”

One of the peculiarities of the words and images in this book is thus immediately revealed. On some pages, the text came first, and for months, sometimes years, afterward, I didn’t draw anything on them. But I always left an empty space. I made/drew the image there many years later. Some days I would be inspired to make a drawing and nothing else. The text would come later. Sometimes the next day, sometimes the next month, sometimes the next year, or five years later. I like to leaf through my journals every now and then, scribbling and sketching on any empty pages. This world belongs to me. Not because it’s secret, but because it is where I am most free, and where I can lean on that feeling as I bring words and images together. My hand draws a LANDSCAPE of its own accord, like someone autographing a page without even realizing they’re doing it. Everything begins with LANDSCAPE.