Notebook Check-In #4: Some final thoughts

And a questionnaire prompt!

April is almost over— what! I plan to continue my writing notebook, and I wanted to share some of the thoughts I’m having about notebooks, collecting material toward poems and essays, and more …

(Also, a note: not many people seemed interested in using the chat function to share stylized journal entries, but I’m going to leave comments open on this post, if you’d like to respond to any of the thoughts below or share thoughts of your own about notebook-keeping!)

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So, here are some of my recent thoughts on notebooks:

1. I’m still thinking about the difference between writing notebooks, commonplace books, journals, diaries.

I’m sure there are academics who have discussed their own definitions of these terms and theorized differences among them … But here I will discuss my own experiences and ideas, in case those are helpful.

There have been times throughout the years when I have kept diaries/journals, setting down some of the events of my days and reflecting on them, and I’ve found this helpful in different ways— it’s useful to go back and look at who I was, what I was thinking in the past. It’s sometimes been useful in journals to spill out feelings, a swirl of thoughts, anxieties, to-do lists and just get it all out. (Some people call this a “brain dump.” See also Julia Cameron’s “morning pages” from The Artist’s Way.) I do find that (for me) I can get tired of the “get it all out” technique and start to feel that I’m going in circles or not moving beyond that (toward other writing and/or other techniques for attending to problems). But maybe that’s part of a psychological and writerly process for me, this movement between wanting to keep a journal—that attends to my swirling thoughts and feelings—and wanting to do something else with my notebooks.

So, this is interesting. Before I sat down to write this, I picked a couple cards from Kim Krans’s “The Wild Unknown” archetype deck. The King, like the Emperor in tarot, is about structure and rules and perhaps taking oneself in hand. And the Heart has to do with “the realm of expansion and compassion.” Krans writes, “This card encourages us to move past the layers of life’s tangles and knots and enter the wild and sacred center of The Self.” Together these speak to allowing our inner guidance system to move past ego and harshness. Even in committing to your goals, don’t clamp down too tightly. Let in play and possibility.

These diaries/journals have also served as commonplace books for me, by which I just mean that I’ve sometimes used them to collect passages and quotes that were meaningful to me when I encountered them. I can see the value of keeping notebooks that are just for passages and quotations, but I’ve never been able to stick to that, exactly. I do have some Word documents on my computer that serve that purpose, though. In those, I like to collect quotes from artists and writers that I find useful or inspiring.

Writing notebooks as a space to keep some record of my days and collect interesting observations, memories, and turns of phrase, along with the “commonplace book” type passages and quotes— those probably began for me when I was in my MFA program for poetry, when I was thinking more consciously about collecting material toward poems. The short version of the difference between “journals” and “writing notebooks” for me is that I’ve found that when I pulled back a little from the emotion and judgment around any events I set down (that is, became less “journal”-y), it was helpful for my writing. I was able to look back through those notebooks as potential material because of a certain degree of restraint. There might be a couple things going on there: 1. The notebooks were about learning to enjoy my observations and inner monologue, so they became both a good record of some parts of my life but also felt more streamlined and easier to “work with”; and 2. I believe I was training myself to let the details speak for themselves, to a certain extent. To not worry about spelling out the subtext (for myself or a potential reader). I believe this has been connected in some ways to putting some space around my anxieties and learning to trust myself and my observations and voice.

But/and/also (as one of my favorite astrologers Chani Nicholas says), in the interest of full disclosure, there’s movement between these poles for me. The “brain dump”/getting it all out of my head mode still has its place, even as I’m (once again) remembering the value of a slightly more stylized/restrained, but still playful and exploratory writing notebook. And my ideas about whether to keep these different modes in the same notebook are changing all the time.

2. I’m thinking again about the creative value of moving between freedom and constraint.

I’ve discussed this before, approaching it from more than one angle. (Here I discuss it in relation to Natalie Goldberg’s ideas about wildness and timed writing.) In general, I’m remembering how keeping a writing notebook— in addition to being about refraining from judgment-based writing, for the most part— is a space of exploration and accrual of material. I’m also remembering how much exploration and openness to life “material” goes into any essay or poem. The work of that, the play of that, it’s a practice that we can (with lightheartedness, with a beginner’s mind) commit ourselves to.

3. It’s all about allowing that movement between poles

I talked about these “poles” of creativity here.

To crib from myself, some of these poles we move between might be:

• Structure // freedom

• Constraints // variety

• Taking yourself seriously // being playful

• Having an endpoint in mind // open exploration

• Planning // working intuitively

• Being open to input // trusting your inner knowing

To quote our venerable queer uncle Walt, “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

4. There’s much to be said for allowing in general.

I love what author

Sonya Huber

has to say about her writing practice, which is basically to sit down an hour a day at the computer and do something, if I’m understanding correctly. It doesn’t matter if it’s working on the current main project or one of her side projects. The process is the point. She’s written multiple books this way.

And, like me, she finds it hard to draw a hard line between writing as therapeutic and writing as “high art.” Below is what Huber has to say about that. (For more context, see this post from her Nuts and Bolts with Sonya Substack.)

This is where the needlessly binary “writing isn’t therapy” debate gets a little confusing for me. Because I gotta say that it is very good for me as a whole person to have a relationship with writing where it is the safe space that I can play. (I talk about this with Kate, too.) Sitting at my desk for the hour of writing is the only place I am free of conflicts, targets, outcomes, pain, and evaluation. As a sort of spiritual well-spring, this practice keeps me in touch with that part of my soul and the belief that a non-outcomes mindset is good for humans. It’s good for me. It’s centering, it’s a daily re-orientation. I might be reading into it, but this is where the goal of separating writing from writing as high art runs off the rails from my daily experience.

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And here’s a prompt:

I enjoy a good questionnaire poem, and I think it can be a good way to dive into some material in your notebook. So, the prompt is to do a self-interview. Maureen Thorson recently offered a prompt on the NaPoWriMo site based on the Proust Questionnaire. You can see that prompt here.

For an added element, you might play with expansion and contraction. Let yourself be wild/weird and dive deep into your answers. Play with strange leaps and images/metaphors. Then go back and assess what you have, picking out the best lines, even if they don’t make overt “sense.”

Happy writing!

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A couple workshop announcements: The timing wasn’t working out for some of our interested students, so we’ve postponed Nancy McCabe’s workshop “Shapes of Stories” until summer (likely starting 7/8). If you’re interested in joining the summer course, would you mind answering this question (in comments or by shooting me a message): Would you personally prefer a 10-week or 8-week workshop?

Megan Baxter’s five-week “Memoir in Collage” course starts Sunday and has a few open spots. As a thank you to my paid subscribers, I am offering a flash sale of 20% off, if you’d like to claim one of those final spots. Email me for the discount code!

Finally, if you want to jump in and join me for a generative writing workshop tomorrow (Saturday 4/27), spots are still available for that, as well! Only $40, or $25 for paid subscribers!