5.9 Notebooks
A writer always carries pen and paper.
According to many books about writing, notebooks provide the most common scaffold (Brande, 1934; Cameron, 2022; Clark, 2008b; Goldberg, 1986; Janzer, 2016; Lamott, 1995; Raab, 2010). A notebook primarily scaffolds a writer’s memory. Writers often carry a notebook which they use to immediately record observations and ideas before forgetting them. Hemingway constantly wrote in his notebooks while seated in Parisian cafes: “The blue-backed notebooks, the two pencils and the pencil sharpener (a pocketknife was too wasteful), the marble-topped tables, the smell of early morning, sweeping out and mopping, and luck were all you needed” (Hemingway, 1964, p. 91).
Notebooks offer additional affordances. Regularly writing in notebooks makes writing habitual. Some writers advise writing in a notebook just after awakening as a method to become more receptive to inspiration (Brande, 1934; Cameron, 2022).
Notebooks serve as essential tools for creative writing. For instance, Charles Darwin kept field notebooks during his voyage on the Beagle and used later notebooks to explore his ideas about evolution (Darwin et al., 1987). Darwin’s notebooks, available at the website Darwin Online, provided the core material for his published works (Darwin, 1988; Darwin et al., 1962).
Notebooks for academic writing can take other useful forms. I encourage my students to use an idea log while reading shorter sources (i.e., articles or book chapters). When you finish reading a source, you enter a date into an idea log, and then add two paragraphs. The first describes the just-read content in your own words. The second describes what you find interesting in the source, or how an idea in the source relates to your other ideas.
Idea logs, as sequences of two-paragraph entries, seem like short-form notebooks. A book summary illustrates a longer form notebook. When I read a book, I use pen or pencil to make the book my own (Adler & Van Doren, 1972). I summarize key points in the margin, where I also make notes about other ideas my reading suggests. I also underline important passages for later quoting. When I finish the book, I create a summary by typing my marginalia and underlined quotes into a word processing file. I organize my summary by using the book’s chapter and section titles. I have posted some of my book summaries on my website: http://www.bcp.psych.ualberta.ca/~mike/Pearl_Street/Margin/index.html.
I find any useful notebook only becomes so through regular reading and re-reading. Writing a book summary helps me consolidate a book’s material right after I finish reading. However, book summaries become far more useful later, when I reread them, because they scaffold my memory for previously consumed material.
