The Weight of Words:
On Keeping a Commonplace Book

Kellie D. Brown

“I'd forgotten, while everything had still been bright, to seek to discover what will always endure, what can really be relied on when it starts to get dark.” I pause at this quote by Peter Høeg from his novel The Elephant Keeper’s Children as I flip through the pages of my commonplace book in search of inspiration. Captured in an entry when I read the book in 2015, it is an observation by the 14-year-old boy who narrates the story. At the time, his words struck me as profound and even necessary. Today, they startle me with both their timeless and timely wisdom. Several years earlier, I had begun the habit of keeping a notebook of memorable lines from books, films, and other forms of media. Stocking this storehouse seemed a natural expression of my love affair with words. Although I had published numerous academic articles and a book, I didn’t yet consider myself a writer. So the salvaging process lacked the deliberateness it does today, as I need prompts and source material. I also didn’t know at the time that my new practice was the long-held tradition of keeping a commonplace book.

The origin of the commonplace book traces back to the invention of the printing press and the explosion of information that resulted. This encyclopedic scrapbook offered a means of storing and organizing knowledge that threatened to overwhelm. Intended for individual use, these repositories housed information of selected interest—anything from quotations and prayers, to poems, proverbs, or even recipes. Their purpose also varied, from personal reflection or practical daily use, to as source material for writers, teachers, and politicians.

 I first encountered the term “commonplace book” while reading Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith & Art, which offers her profound and at times provocative ideas about creativity and spirituality. The volume also reveals much about her process as a thinker and writer. In an early chapter, almost as an aside, she explains the significant role throughout her life of a commonplace book and differentiates it from the more academic method of documentation via citations and footnotes. She affirms that the words she copies into her notebook, mostly from other writers, are meant to be devotional and meditative. She confides that she turns to it for assistance with prayer and in her search for “meaning which will help me to live life lovingly.”

Always eager for writing advice from those whose words give me pause, I have noticed that some of those I admire most call us back to the more manual and tactile practices that run counter to our paperless, digital age. Barbara Brown Taylor, for example, insists that “Pencil and paper will take you where a keyboard never will.” I have found that to be true, and I try to pass on this wisdom to my students. My commonplace book reflects a hybridization of the two approaches. Many entries are handwritten with an assortment of pens and at various levels of legibility. Some material has been cut from typewritten or other print sources and taped onto the pages. The resulting bricolage piques my creativity.

 I curate my notebook with the same collect-all repository approach that Anne Lamott does with her index cards. In her well-known book on writing, Bird by Bird, she devotes an entire chapter to index cards. She confesses that she sows them throughout the rooms of her house, including the bathroom, with pencils and pens at the ready to capture thoughts and ideas. An avid walker, she makes sure to tuck one in her pocket, having too often fallen victim to the forgotten observation or solution. Not secure with a lone index card, I don’t leave the house without multiple paper options although my phone can and does work as documentarian. My purse contains two memo pads, and the console of my car holds both a small and a large, lined notepad. Visitors to my home can also testify to pads of sticky notes and pens planted throughout the rooms. But hopefully squirreled away from their eyes are the messy piles of those squares and other paper scraps already marked with salvaged words and ideas. Those stacks are awaiting entry into my commonplace book. Even though I aspire to make their transcription a regular habit, like with other household chores, I fall behind, leaving them to accumulate in cluttered heaps that silently chide me for my inattention.

I share a similar fear of not only forgetting the brilliant idea I had while walking to the refrigerator but also of not having the perfect material for my latest project. Whether I am writing an essay or a sermon, I reach for my commonplace book, relishing the texture of the lined paper and the rustle of the turned pages. This is the closest I will come to being an archaeologist who digs through artifacts in search of an illuminating discovery. Much in my book qualifies as quotable wisdom from others, both fiction and nonfiction, spoken and written. (And yes, I have pulled off the road on more than one occasion to snatch a remnant from an audiobook or podcast.) But my commonplace book also serves as a storehouse of words. You see, I love words in their singularity, whether obscure or common. Handwritten vocabulary lists fill page after page. Any one word might spark the creation of an entire project, such as with “tenderize,” which inspired an essay about revisiting the wonders of my grandmother's kitchen with its rusty tin of meat tenderizer used to treat my childhood bee stings.

When I turn to my curated dictionary, I resist the urge to skim quickly. I read each word slowly, reverently, the weight and sound forming the chant of my writing ritual.

 I enter . . .
catacombs, hermitages, gulags, trenches, reliquaries, scriptoria, cartoon graveyards

 I encounter . . .
mudlarks, hobgoblins, anchorites, contrarians, emissaries, hecklers, usurpers, scriveners

 I experience . . .
witching hours, salad days, twilight years, doomsday clocks, nuclear winters

 I examine . . .
worry stones, fault lines, skeleton keys, vapor trails, ghost ships, bottle trees

 I emerge . . .
whittled, curdled, bewitched, desiccated, shrouded
corrosive, dexterous, permeable, murky, quaint, cryptic

When I exit the world of my commonplace book, I can then examine how the journey has enlightened me, transformed me. I am like Bernard, Virginia Woolf’s deeply introspective character from her novel The Waves. A connoisseur of words, Bernard declares, “I am made and remade constantly. Different people draw different words from me.” Yes, that is the mystery, the power, the weight of words.

For more information on the history of the commonplace book, see Commonplace Books: Creative Note-taking through History