Notebook Check-In 2: Hermit crabs & lists

How is your April going? (How is it almost the middle of April?) My April notebook project is proceeding relatively well, though these last couple days, I’ve found myself reverting to the mode I’d been stuck in for a while— writing lists of business ideas and publishing ideas and project ideas, rather than doing the writing itself. (Idea mode can be important, but I can hang out there a long time.) If you are keeping a writer’s notebook, let me know in the comments how it’s going. I’ll leave the comments open to everyone.

And now some models and prompts for you!

As seen in a garden near my therapist’s office. There’s a prompt…

Fragments and Lists

There’s a kind of list that I do find creatively generative, and that’s a list in which we follow the details of our days— sensory observations, snippets of conversation, memories and insights that emerge. An element of this, and one that can help develop and reinforce your writing “voice,” is the practice of paying attention to the rhythms of your own thoughts. What are the phrases that float through your mind? How does your thinking bubble up? (This idea of spending a period of time paying attention to the language and rhythms of your thoughts is one I got from the poet Carol Frost, who talked about this in a craft talk I saw.)

Here’s an example of a list piece that I pulled from my writing notebook(s). This piece was inspired by a poem by Ron Padgett, and it appears in my first full-length book, The Itinerant Girl’s Guide to Self-Hypnosis:

This piece obviously didn’t emerge in one fell swoop; rather, it’s in the vein of the stylized journal entry. I like the way this becomes a “hermit crab” piece as well. Free advice masquerading as a poem. Or vice versa!

You can always start with my good old “five for today” exercise, which I explain here. I find that it’s a great way to get people (including myself) paying attention to the details of their day-to-day lives, as well as a good way to get past the fear of having nothing to say when you sit down to write in your notebook.

Want some more ideas about topics you can write on and lists you can make in your notebook? Check out this list of “Journal Ideas” and “Writing Experiments” from Bernadette Mayer.

Comment below with any thoughts on keeping a writing notebook, and if you want to post your own “five for today” or other list piece, you can do so in the chat here. Both are open to all subscribers this time!

Check out Muse’s Spring courses in personal essay and memoir here.