Commonplace Books
By coincidence, I happen to be starting a new commonplace book this week. Usually a commonplace book lasts me 6-9 months (I use large softcover Moleskins). Since I happen to be starting a new one with the new calendar year, though, I thought I would take a moment to appreciate and recommend this tool at the heart of my writing practice.
My commonplace notebook isn’t a journal; it doesn’t track what’s going on in my life, but rather what’s going on in my head. Sometimes I think of it as the writing equivalent of a yoga mat—a place where any kind of movement or stillness can happen. Sometimes I think of it as a cauldron—a vessel where notes, quotes, anecdotes, observations, questions, obsessions, frustrations, and facts simmer together into something new.
When I learn something, through research or daily life, that I think I can use in my writing, it goes into my commonplace book. When I read a line or sentence that really resonates, it goes into my commonplace book. When I look up a word in the dictionary, the definition goes into my commonplace book. When I read something I disagree with and want to push back against it, my counterargument goes into my commonplace book. When a phrase starts haunting the back of my head, it goes into my commonplace book—and hopefully becomes part of a poem. When I have a question about my work or the world, I write it in my commonplace book. When I have something to say, I find a blank page in my commonplace book. When I feel stuck, I reach for my commonplace book and turn through the pages to see what clues I might have left for myself.
For example, my most recent commonplace book contains:
-lots of notes on World War II and Cold War era spies and spycraft
-lots of drafts of poems—partial drafts, abandoned drafts, drafts that have been marked up and revised in three different colors of ink, and drafts tagged with checkmarks to signal that I have typed them
-definitions of Integrity and Confidence
-complaints about the smell of dead cicadas
-quotes from D.W. Winnicott, Emily Dickinson, Kate Bolick, Leo Marks, Anne Sexton, Joanna Field and others
-lists of things I things I want to write about, lists of things I remember from high school, lists of things I miss
-this question: Is the poem a time machine or a timelessness machine?
Having everything in one place helps me to see connections I might otherwise miss. For example, this quote from Emily Dickinson: “Thank God the loudest Place he made / Is licensed to be still” + this quote from Anne Sexton: “A writer is essentially a spy” + notes about Ian Fleming (British Naval Intelligence Officer and creator of James Bond) + notes about poem-based codes used by spies in Nazi-occupied France à an essay about the overlap between writing and spying. Having everything in one place also keeps me from losing individual drafts or scraps. And writing it all by hand offers me a much-needed break from the glare of the screen; the commonplace book gives me space for messy experiments and uncertain beginnings.
