Listening seeds ideas. Overheard dialogue, especially misheard words, are auditory stimulants for the imagination. Said Joan Didion in her essay “On Keeping a Notebook:”
“See enough and write it down, I tell myself, and then some morning when the world seems drained of wonder, some day when I am only going through the motions of doing what I am supposed to do… on that bankrupt morning I will simply open my notebook and there it will all be, a forgotten account with accumulated interest, paid passage back to the world out there…”
From the dull to the senseless, an ambient awareness latches on to snippets of interestingness in any conversation. The journal archives and then whispers for a second look. Simply rereading our notes gives them a new form, turning the slightest quip into a saintly significance.
All writing is thinking.
“I don’t know what I think until I try to write it down.”
Joan Didion
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7 responses to “Notebooks are ‘a forgotten account with accumulated interest’”
I have shared on my blogs, but mostly I work with my dreams to create poetry.
That is so neat. Have you any shared any? Would love to hear about some of the wildest ones.
I used to. Now with technology, the first thing I do on awakening is record my dream on my laptop. Middle of the night dreams, I enter in my phone. I’ve been doing this since 1986, so the dreams no longer elude me in the mornings.
Interesting. Do you keep a notepad next to your bed?
I record my dreams for this reason – an endless source of inspiration for writing.
Nicely said. The notebook is a great resource.