How And Why To Keep A “Commonplace Book”

Writers have kept notebooks since time immemorial. The auctorial equivalent to the artist’s sketchbook is the “commonplace book,” which can contain everything from newspaper clippings to grocery lists to attempts to capture those inspirational bolts out of the blue.

I’m sure that somewhere out there, there is a writer who is far more disciplined tha... See more

This passage from Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From, which is discussing Darwin’s use of keeping a commonplace book (a practice I have always loved myself) as a vital part of where his most important ideas came from, just jumped off the page at me:

“The great minds of the period —Milton, Bacon, Locke were zealous believers in the memory-en

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