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I like notebooks. For years, I would occasionally with ceremony start a new notebook for a specific project, stall on the project or finish it more quickly than expected, and then not feel able to use the notebook for something else. I have found ways around this, and also ways to use the Very Good Notebooks. I have a System.
First, I have a Scratch notebook. Very nearly anything I need to write down goes in this: game notes, partial shopping lists, conference notes, partial recipes, commentary on same, research stuff, email addresses, everything. It is one notebook, so it's less likely to get left aside with a specific project, and because it is literally intended for everything, I don't feel shy about using it. The Scratch notebook has just hit Volume 2, and I am in the process of covering Vol 1 in stickers to demonstrate that it is no longer the active book, and stop me from grabbing it out of habit. Theoretically, it can live on a shelf now, but we're still in a transition period.
Then there's Miscellany, which is for chunks of text I want to preserve. These get copied out with a citation of some kind. Some of them are copied over from the Scratch notebook. It's literally a book of quotes. This is, I feel, a good use for a fancy notebook, although mine is quite plain.
And then the Commonplace. John Locke proposed a way to index a commonplace book, and I have used that. I quote myself from a few years ago to explain:
Every so often, I sit down and go over the Scratch book and find stuff that should be copied into the indexed Commonplace for easier finding. The Miscellany and Scratch notebooks flow into subsequent volumes pretty smoothly, and the Commonplace should be read as one long piece. So far, though, only the Scratch has gone anywhere near a second notebook. I do have second and possibly third volumes waiting, though.
First, I have a Scratch notebook. Very nearly anything I need to write down goes in this: game notes, partial shopping lists, conference notes, partial recipes, commentary on same, research stuff, email addresses, everything. It is one notebook, so it's less likely to get left aside with a specific project, and because it is literally intended for everything, I don't feel shy about using it. The Scratch notebook has just hit Volume 2, and I am in the process of covering Vol 1 in stickers to demonstrate that it is no longer the active book, and stop me from grabbing it out of habit. Theoretically, it can live on a shelf now, but we're still in a transition period.
Then there's Miscellany, which is for chunks of text I want to preserve. These get copied out with a citation of some kind. Some of them are copied over from the Scratch notebook. It's literally a book of quotes. This is, I feel, a good use for a fancy notebook, although mine is quite plain.
And then the Commonplace. John Locke proposed a way to index a commonplace book, and I have used that. I quote myself from a few years ago to explain:
You take a blank notebook. On a convenient page near the front, you write down a list of letters and vowels: AA, AE, AI, AO, AU, BA, BE, BI, and so on. You only put in QU for reasons that should be obvious, and I shoved all of XYZ in one block. Your index is now ready for construction, which is continuous until very near the end of the notebook's lifetime.
Let's say you're adding a note about Onions. You have nothing else in the notebook, so you turn to the first blank two-page spread, and at the bottom of the left page, you put the number 1, and at the bottom of the right page, you put the number 2. At the top of the left page, write 'ONIONS' in caps, and write your note after that. I set mine out so that the title of each entry is in the left margin, and the entry to the right, but there's no need for that. Now, turn back to your index, and beside the OI entry, write '1'. OI, because O is the first letter on Onion, and I because I the first following vowel. Next, you might write an entry on Cucumbers. You write it on page 3, numbering pages 3 and 4, and add '3' to the index entry for CU. ANd you continue to add pages in that manner until you want to add, say, Onigilly (Japanese rice balls). There's already a page for OI, so you go to page 1, and under the entry for ONIONS, you add ONIGILLY. And you continue thus. If you run out of room on a double spread, you go to the next free page, write 'Continued from page X', continue there, and at the end of the original two-page set, write 'Continued on Page X'. If you run out of notebook, this becomes 'Continued on Vol 2, Page X'. And Vol 2 gets its own index, which also has, at the beginning of any two-page spread, 'Continued from Vol 1, Page X'.
This has two magical effects. First, it allows you to find entries without flipping pages madly, trying to remember if you wrote about DUMPLINGS before you wrote that long bit about NOODLES, or after. Second, on the way to finding the entry you want, you see lots of other entries, some semi-related because they're similar words, others thoroughly unrelated, but they all fire new thinking and new connections in the style of a printed encyclopedia.
Let's say you're adding a note about Onions. You have nothing else in the notebook, so you turn to the first blank two-page spread, and at the bottom of the left page, you put the number 1, and at the bottom of the right page, you put the number 2. At the top of the left page, write 'ONIONS' in caps, and write your note after that. I set mine out so that the title of each entry is in the left margin, and the entry to the right, but there's no need for that. Now, turn back to your index, and beside the OI entry, write '1'. OI, because O is the first letter on Onion, and I because I the first following vowel. Next, you might write an entry on Cucumbers. You write it on page 3, numbering pages 3 and 4, and add '3' to the index entry for CU. ANd you continue to add pages in that manner until you want to add, say, Onigilly (Japanese rice balls). There's already a page for OI, so you go to page 1, and under the entry for ONIONS, you add ONIGILLY. And you continue thus. If you run out of room on a double spread, you go to the next free page, write 'Continued from page X', continue there, and at the end of the original two-page set, write 'Continued on Page X'. If you run out of notebook, this becomes 'Continued on Vol 2, Page X'. And Vol 2 gets its own index, which also has, at the beginning of any two-page spread, 'Continued from Vol 1, Page X'.
This has two magical effects. First, it allows you to find entries without flipping pages madly, trying to remember if you wrote about DUMPLINGS before you wrote that long bit about NOODLES, or after. Second, on the way to finding the entry you want, you see lots of other entries, some semi-related because they're similar words, others thoroughly unrelated, but they all fire new thinking and new connections in the style of a printed encyclopedia.
Every so often, I sit down and go over the Scratch book and find stuff that should be copied into the indexed Commonplace for easier finding. The Miscellany and Scratch notebooks flow into subsequent volumes pretty smoothly, and the Commonplace should be read as one long piece. So far, though, only the Scratch has gone anywhere near a second notebook. I do have second and possibly third volumes waiting, though.
