When I was in sixth grade, reading Dickens and Hawthorne and the Brontës, I’d bring sentences I didn’t understand to my dad — a geophysicist with a poet’s soul.
This is what I have been calling a writers notebook. I have piles of them, less now that I'm primarily digital, but I miss the pen and paper versions. Overheard dialogue. Fragments of memories. Incredible sentences. Names to use for characters in my work. Drawings of strangers on a train. Ideas for this or that. Always carry a notebook. And a pen.
I do copy quotes out into a book, but I love this idea of a commonplace book! And I love that you are unapologetically scholarly. I still feel a bit 'silly' about leaning into being scholarly, as if I'm being pretentious or getting ideas above my station, or something! But you've inspired me to embrace it more, thank you.
Thank you for saying this! I’ve felt silly too sometimes, especially writing explanations of philosophers, but it truly makes my thinking more interesting! I’d love to know when you begin!
This is what I have been calling a writers notebook. I have piles of them, less now that I'm primarily digital, but I miss the pen and paper versions. Overheard dialogue. Fragments of memories. Incredible sentences. Names to use for characters in my work. Drawings of strangers on a train. Ideas for this or that. Always carry a notebook. And a pen.
I do copy quotes out into a book, but I love this idea of a commonplace book! And I love that you are unapologetically scholarly. I still feel a bit 'silly' about leaning into being scholarly, as if I'm being pretentious or getting ideas above my station, or something! But you've inspired me to embrace it more, thank you.
Thank you for saying this! I’ve felt silly too sometimes, especially writing explanations of philosophers, but it truly makes my thinking more interesting! I’d love to know when you begin!