It’s time for the April Blogging A to Z challenge! I love a good challenge.
I took an on-line course from one of my favorite writers, Oliver Burkeman (Four Thousand Weeks, Meditations for Mortals). The course was called, “Designing Your System for Creativity,” and it was chock-full of methods and means to increase productivity in one’s creative life. One challenge on day 2 was to see your writing as making “widgets” and commit to a daily deliverable. He provided little tracking charts for a thirty day challenge as well. And number 7 of his topics was the Daily Deliverable. It was simply a way to move a project from one step to the next, a way to hand if off to others. For me, the hardest thing to do is press publish, so for April, my daily deliverable will be a blog post. And for the April A to Z challenge, I need a topic. Enter Jillian Hess and her Substack, Noted. If you like note taking and reading the notes of famous people, run, don’t walk and subscribe. She is doing an April Commonplace Book challenge. So, there, multi-tasking. I will be doing an A to Z Commonplace Book.
I haven’t quite decided if the letter of the day will be in the quote, the quoted work title, or the writer’s name, and I think it best if that is flexible (looking at you, Q, X, and Z.) But there will be some thin connection to the letter of the day.
I first started a common place book after re-reading Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water.
(A parenthesis here about quotations and credits. I was taught in college how to footnote, how to give credit where credit is due, and in the accepted, scholarly way. But most of the writers I want to quote in this book are writers whose words I’ve copied down in a big, brown, Mexican notebook, what is called a commonplace book. I copy down words and thoughts upon which I want to meditate, and footnoting is not my purpose; this is a devotional, not a scholarly note-book. I’ve been keeping it for many years, and turn to it for help in prayer, in understanding. All I’m looking for in it is meaning, meaning which will help me to live life lovingly, and I am only now beginning to see the usefulness of noting book title and page, rather than simply jotting down, “Francis of Assisi.”)
I didn’t have a big, brown, Mexican notebook, but I had various other notebooks, and I had index cards. Soon, my writing space became the equivalent of the crazy cat lady, with random quotes and notebooks skulking around with no rhyme or reason. I attributed by the writer’s name and sometimes the name of the book or article, trusting that Google would help me find it again if necessary. It was rarely necessary.
A couple years ago, I read an idea from Austen Kleon. He used a Five-Year journal as a commonplace book, and would see what things resonated on the same day year to year. This fascinated me, and I am now about two years in.
So this April, I will keep an online version of my commonplace book. Call it my latest exercise in an attempt to reach my goal of being a prolific writer in 2025. So, in addition to writing 1 short story each week (Because Ray Bradbury said you can’t write 52 bad ones – challenge accepted!) I will post an entry from my Commonplace book and a short note on why the quote spoke to me on that day. I can hear you now – sucky stories and random quotes? Sign me up.
The Story Factory 