Keep an April notebook with me?

On NaPoWriMo, gleaning, and the material of our lives

See enough and write it down, I tell myself, and then some morning when the world seems drained of wonder, some day when I am only going through the motions of doing what I am supposed to do— on that bankrupt morning I will simply open my notebook and there it will all be, a forgotten account with accumulated interest, paid passage back to the world out there….

~Joan Didion from “On Keeping a Notebook”

Recently a poet who took one of my self-guided essay classes commented on Facebook that even now that the class is over, she’s been returning to the course, noting that she found my ideas about “gleaning” from notebook writings particularly helpful. “How wonderful!” I thought, quickly followed by, “Oof. I used to be so good at gleaning from my own notebooks.”

I’ve been thinking about how to get back into an even more consistent writing habit. I write things in notebooks, but I seem to have gotten away from consistently making the type of observation that can easily be woven into poems and essays. I am, lately, too intent on trying to figure out an “idea” for writing ahead of time and making lists and plans and schedules, rather than following curiosities and recording moments without judgment.

Making myself pause and notice the mundane details of my world yesterday

Here’s the advice about keeping a notebook from my course “Approaching Mystery: Writing Flash Memoir about Wonder and the Unexplained”:

As you work on the  class for the next few weeks, experiment with developing a “studio practice,” as visual artists do. This is time for you to keep notes on your life and experience and the questions that emerge for you when you ground yourself in the now and then let the mind drift. 

Ideas for studio practice: 

• Keep a notebook: Write down what is actually happening or straightforward things from your day, like what you have eaten, who you have talked to, what you saw last time you left the house. Also dreams, daydreams, memories, conversations/eavesdropping ... 

• Putter.

• Pay attention to that which draws your attention, maybe even taking a walk just before you sit down to record some ideas.

• Notice patterns that emerge over the course of a week or a month when you follow your attention.  

• Experiment with adding actual images to your notebook, whether in the form of drawings, collages, or found images (from mail, magazines, etc.) that draw your attention.

I'm thinking about the word "gleaning.” You are gleaning ideas from your subconscious, your relaxed conscious mind, your memory, your environment, and the interaction of all these. Give yourself permission to connect to your creativity as a process and not always worry about being product-oriented. And please note: if you have a full schedule because of caretaking responsibilities, work, etc., please be kind to yourself, but experiment with finding ways to work in small creativity breaks, in which you give yourself permission to relax into a potentially rich psychic space. This can even happen when you're driving. (Don't jot down notes WHILE you drive, though.) 

As I noted in the first segment of this lesson, begin keeping notes on your week-- take notes on dreams, things you read, conversations, memories that come up, weather.  You will use material from your notebook in the next writing exercise.

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Joan Didion has a great essay about keeping a notebook, which Maria Popova discusses here. The quote from Didion above recently appeared on Facebook, but passage lacks context. “See enough and write it down, I tell myself”— that’s a rhetorical move. Here’s more of the passage:

How it felt to me: that is getting closer to the truth about a notebook. I sometimes delude myself about why I keep a notebook, imagine that some thrifty virtue derives from preserving everything observed. See enough and write it down, I tell myself, and then some morning when the world seems drained of wonder, some day when I am only going through the motions of doing what I am supposed to do, which is write — on that bankrupt morning I will simply open my notebook and there it will all be, a forgotten account with accumulated interest, paid passage back to the world out there: dialogue overheard in hotels and elevators and at the hat-check counter in Pavillon (one middle-aged man shows his hat check to another and says, ‘That’s my old football number’); impressions of Bettina Aptheker and Benjamin Sonnenberg and Teddy (‘Mr. Acapulco’) Stauffer; careful aperçus about tennis bums and failed fashion models and Greek shipping heiresses, one of whom taught me a significant lesson (a lesson I could have learned from F. Scott Fitzgerald, but perhaps we all must meet the very rich for ourselves) by asking, when I arrived to interview her in her orchid-filled sitting room on the second day of a paralyzing New York blizzard, whether it was snowing outside. I imagine, in other words, that the notebook is about other people. But of course it is not. I have no real business with what one stranger said to another at the hat-check counter in Pavillon; in fact I suspect that the line ‘That’s my old football number’ touched not my own imagination at all, but merely some memory of something once read, probably ‘The Eighty-Yard Run.’ Nor is my concern with a woman in a dirty crepe-de-Chine wrapper in a Wilmington bar. My stake is always, of course, in the unmentioned girl in the plaid silk dress. Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point.

“Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point.” For, as she also writes,

I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.

For me it, keeping notebooks can be all of that— a record of times that we found ourselves able to notice (and even love) the mundane world, as well as a record of what our attention was linked to at a given period in our life, which is a window into who we were. Our graces, our foibles. What we lived through. What we survived.

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An idea for April writing

For several years, I wrote a draft of a poem a day in April for National Poetry Month*, posting them on my old blog. It looks like the last time I posted them consistently there was 2017. Then for a few more years, I posted “vignette” a day in April a private group I started on Facebook for that purpose. These vignettes could be prose poems, flash essays, scenes, overheard moments, fragments of thought. Anything short, really.

For some people, having an assignment or a “constraint” can be very useful for coming up with new work and unexpected connections. And the constraint offered by following this instruction— “short piece a day for a month”— was often useful for me. It was challenging but finite, and it helped me remember not to hold on too tightly, to have process be the point. I have gotten many poems and short prose pieces out of my April drafts, but aside from the publishable work that emerged from these efforts, I also value the glimpses into my life and mind across various Aprils. This piece from 2017 that gleans thoughts from a notebook is a window. A time capsule.

So, this year I’m going to take my own advice and keep a daily notebook in April, one that leans more toward observations, concrete detail, dreams— and less toward judgment or planning or having to come to conclusions. If some of it becomes material for poems and essays, all the better, but the focus this year will be on the notebook itself.

If you’d like to join me: every Friday I will post a suggestion and/or encouragement about keeping going with your notebook, as well as a prompt idea for “gleaning” and shaping notebook material, if you choose. And I’ll make a chat thread for paid subscribers to share some of these shaped versions of material they’ve recorded.

Found in a notebook from 2017

To get started this week— write something down every day! It can be a page, or it can be a sentence or phrase. Just commit to daily observations.

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*In 2003, inspired by the idea of National Novel Writing Month, the poet Maureen Thorson began writing a poem a day in April and posting them on her blog. Others followed suit, and within a few years, Maureen launched the NaPoWriMo website, where she posts a prompt a day for the month of April. (Read her “about” section for some history on it and for her philosophy about who “owns” the idea of writing 30 poems in April, which, she notes, is nobody. Nice.) If you’re up for trying poem-a-day in April, I highly recommend these prompts!

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Work with Muse instructors this April!

We have courses with stellar instructors beginning April 28th. Payment plans are available. (More information at the links below.)

‘Shapes of Stories’ with Nancy McCabe

This ten-week course will help you expand your writer’s tool kit by experimenting with a variety of structures—everything from straightforward, traditional presentations to offshoots of the lyric essay.

‘Memoir in Collage’ with Megan Baxter

This five-week course provides a collaged approach to memoir composes a narrative through fragments and found items, building a story from many smaller pie

Drop-In Generative Writing Workshop with Joanna Penn Cooper

This workshop takes place April 27th, 1-3PM Eastern via Zoom.