About fifteen years ago I acquired the habit of carrying a Moleskine notebook and jotting things down that I found interesting or thought I might want to refer to later. This was a major step up from scribbling things on scraps of paper and quickly misplacing them. I always know where my Moleskine is. If I’m dressed, the journal is in my right hip pocket, and my small pen, usually a Fisher Space Pen, is in my right front pocket. If I’m in bed, they are at the ready on my night stand.
I acquired journal #1 to jot down ideas for Kind of Plaid, my first novel. I commuted into Boston most weeks but also spent a good deal of time traveling from Boston on project business to places like Spokane and Cincinnati and Wausau, so I had plenty of time to let the “what if?” improvisation of characters and plot and location play out. Everything I could put into words went into my journal.
I’m working on filling Moleskine #30 and, now that I’m retired, I capture writing ideas at the keyboard and tend to rely more on my Notes app for quick reference to lists and isolated facts.
My little notebook is purely a catch-all for memorable phrases that capture a mood, idea, or feeling, a repository for questions I’d like to delve into more deeply, or a parking lot for topics that sound interesting. I don’t try to polish them up, that might come later. Some entries are starting points for future thinking while others are just plain silly.
- “The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” G.K. Chesterton
- “We’re actors. We’re the opposite of people.” Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
- Charlie Parker: A man playing a saxophone. John Coltrane: A saxophone playing a man.
- Secular Puritans: having acquired wealth the Spartan life of Puritanism became foreign.
- Stone by Stone: The Magnificent History in New England’s Stone Walls, Robert Thorson
- Moxie Days in Lisbon, Maine
- Black Elk’s vision and Plato’s Cave
- Technology is the new nature
- Horatio Snowblower
- Simul justus et peccato – at one and the same time Just and Sinner
I value the time spent in my little notebooks and I’d like to share some of these Commonplaces with you.
What Then? 