An article in today's Guardian looks at ways of organising all the "stuff" that gets written on post-it notes or backs of envelopes, or bookmarked on the computer - and is never looked at again. It suggests that, rather than organise it on your computer, you write it down by hand: "Commonplacing is about internalising that information: engaging deeply, processing it so that it becomes part of you. Writing by hand seems to help; so does not instantly sharing everything."More info about commonplace books (and encouragement to start your own) is on this site (also it's the source of the image).
Their history goes back to the Renaissance, when readers of the now-widely-available printed books would organise their reading and cultivate their minds by writing excerpts into commonplace books under topics - and if you were too lazy to think up your own topics, you could get ready-printed books to fill in. This was "the intersection of manuscript and print culture". Now, they represent the intersection of online, shared culture and the private realm.
I didn't realise that the book I keep, that has my calendar at the front, notes, quotes and commentaries in the middle and lists at the back, had a name! Mind you if you saw some of the ramblings it might better be called an un-commonplace book!
ReplyDeleteHi Margaret,
ReplyDeleteI've kept a commonplace book since the 1960's. Here's the link to a post about it.
http://danawarnerfisher.blogspot.com/2009/12/commonplace-book-notebooks-journals.html
All the best,
Dana Fisher
Mine's a commonplace basket!! It holds postcards, clippings, letters, photos etc then periodically it gets sifted through and sorted and some of it may end up in sketchbook or file or just put back to make new associations.
ReplyDeleteI've been writing quotations in a small notebook with pretty cloth cover since the early '70's when I was in college. I agree with the handwriting making a difference. I've pasted a few things directly in but mostly it's my own writing - interesting to note the different colors of pen and how my handwriting has changed slightly over the years. It's just about full and I have a new small blank book waiting in the wings.
ReplyDeleteI have lots of loose-leaf notebooks with "important" words of wisdom, full articles printed out or pulled from magazines stored within, different notebooks for different subjects, but I rarely refer back to them, surely not as often as my little notebook of quotations.