Re-Noted: Eminem's Boxes of Notes

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

Writing a diary made me happier; keeping things-to-do lists made me more reliable (which, in turn, made those around me happier), and I learned never to go to a doctor’s appointment, or a meeting of any kind, without taking notes of what I heard. But there appeared to be creative benefits too. Every artist I met seemed to have a sketchbook to hand,... See more

Looking back at all the tools and techniques that I've developed over the years as a writer, it occurs to me that most of them are, in one way or another, grappling with two critical mental forces: the power (and weakness) of human memory, and the sometimes overwhelming drive to procrastinate.