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| sticker courtesy of Pomelo Books |
Try This! Doodle Your Listening
Heidi Mordhorst
I debated for a long time about how many notebooks to keep:
one for school, one for poetry, one for my calendar/agenda, one for
everyday household business, one for—yep, that was too many notebooks to
juggle.
In the end, I do keep a separate binder for my teacher stuff, but for
all other purposes I have Just One Notebook. I use it for intentional
sitting-down-to-write, but it’s also the one that I take to writing conferences,
to services at my congregation, to a political meeting, to a wellness workshop.
The pages below are from a workshop called “Redefining Health,” and they
definitely do not capture the organized thread of the presentation!
Instead you see my doodled, fonted, decorated, designed version of
it. I have recorded certain turns of phrase, questions for
myself, pairings of words, tangents, direct quotes, and there are lots of possibilities
for mining poems from the graphic details.
I’m calling this thing you might also like to try “DOODLE YOUR
LISTENING.” Carry your notebook anywhere you’ll be sitting and listening--in
the car with the radio on, in church, at a meeting, at the pool where people
don’t know you’re listening! Design and decorate your notes to see what
happens!
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) had it right:
“A commonplace book is what a
provident poet cannot subsist without, for this proverbial reason, that ‘great
wits have short memories:' and whereas, on the other hand, poets, being liars
by profession, ought to have good memories; to reconcile these, a book of this
sort, is in the nature of a supplemental memory, or a record of what occurs
remarkable in every day’s reading or conversation. There you enter not only
your own original thoughts, (which, a hundred to one, are few and
insignificant) but such of other men as you think fit to make your own, by
entering them there.”
—from “A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet”
—from “A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet”
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Matt Forrest Esenwine continues his Big Year of Breakout by hosting Poetry Friday today at Radio, Rhythm and Rhyme. Go congratulate him on his first book contract!
I have too many journals. For different purposes. I always have a small one in my purse for those times I am listening. Also the notes app on my phone works too.
ReplyDeleteI'm excited about Amy's gallery of "Try This." I even had a student contribute. A great resource for summer writing.
I now have a small notebook in my purse, thanks to my husband...jotting, doodling, writing whole poems...you never know what you will doodle-down.
ReplyDeleteHmm...you've got me thinking. Maybe when I finish the current blue notebook and start the new purple one I got for my birthday, I will try the one notebook approach. It will be interesting to see what happens when I keep all the parts of my life together in one place. I'll either be a more integrated person, or I'll go a little nuts trying to find and track thoughts.
ReplyDeleteHere's my challenge -- so I've got this shelf of notebooks full of writing and jotting...but I never go back and READ any of them. I need to. But when?
I too. Let's set a purpose for our summer. Let's begin each writing/notebooking moment this summer rereading 3-5 pages of an old notebook. When I do this I'm always amazed at the cool and interesting thoughts I'd forgotten I had. : ) Are you in?
DeleteMary has an excellent point. I, too, have many notebooks. On occasion I go back through them and think, "Wow! That was a great idea!" and others "What was I thinking?"
ReplyDeleteI love your idea of doodling rather than trying to put words to everything. I'll have to give it a try, Heidi!
I only wish I could doodle. Somewhere along the line I lost the free-ness and lack of judgment of a child. As for notebooks, any old scrap of paper, usually an envelope, works for me!
ReplyDeleteLove this, Heidi - I'm a lifelong doodler, too. I've been "consolidating" in recent years, too.
ReplyDeleteThe Swift quote is wonderful!! Thanks for all.