Amna Shah
@amna
Amna Shah
“commonplacing,” as it was called, involved transcribing interesting or inspirational passages from one’s reading, assembling a personalized encyclopedia of quotations. There is a distinct self-help quality to the early descriptions of commonplacing’s virtues: maintaining the books enabled one to “lay up a fund of knowledge, from which we may at al
... See moreSteven Johnson • Where Good Ideas Come From
In its most customary form, “commonplacing,” as it was called, involved transcribing interesting or inspirational passages from one’s reading, assembling a personalized encyclopedia of quotations. There is a distinct self-help quality to the early descriptions of commonplacing’s virtues: maintaining the books enabled one to “lay up a fund of knowle
... See moreSteven Johnson • Where Good Ideas Come From
What goes in here? Brain dumps? Or thoughts??
Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
It would be worth setting up a commonplace book of your own where you can collect phrases or sayings which you read or overhear and which provide inspiration.
Andrew Anderson • The Ritual of Writing: Writing as Spiritual Practice
Emerson:
... See more"A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majest