I was reading something online the other day, and it was something cultural/political, and I remember thinking, “These are interesting ideas, and I’m interested in exploring them. I should write these ideas down.”

But then I didn’t. I clicked on something else, and now today I wish I could remember what those ideas were. This is a reminder that I need to have my writer’s notebook always handy (always open?), and I need to write everything down. The notebook isn’t a performance space.*  It’s a collecting machine, a net, and I need the net to be ready, and I need to swing it around a lot, collecting thoughts/ideas/motifs/messages: anything that my head or my heart wants to remember.

 

*I sometimes slip into the bad habit of thinking that I must “perform” in my writer’s notebook. As if there is an audience who will read it, and I must impress them. But a notebook is not a performance space. It’s not meant for an outside audience. It’s terrible that I fall into this trap of trying to “write good” in the notebook; it’s the same trap I continually warn my students about, and yet here I am, getting my hand caught in the same snare.