Keeping a commonplace book

A commonplace book is a place to copy out the sentences you do not want to lose. Not a diary, not a to-do list, not a second brain with tags and backlinks. Just a notebook where good lines go to live together.

I have kept one for six years. It is roughly half quotations, a quarter overheard fragments, and a quarter things I thought while walking. Almost none of it is organised. That turns out to be the point.

Copying by hand is the work

Highlighting a passage takes half a second and leaves nothing behind. Copying it out takes a minute, and by the end of that minute you have argued with the sentence, noticed its rhythm, and decided whether you actually agree. The friction is not a flaw in the method. The friction is the method.

You do not remember what you read. You remember what you rewrote.

Reread it once a season

Every few months I read the whole thing from the start. Ideas that were unrelated when I wrote them down have quietly drifted into each other. Two fragments recorded a year apart turn out to be the same thought, and the essay writes itself out of the collision. That is the only search function it needs.

If you are starting one, resist the urge to design it first. One notebook, one pen, a date at the top of each entry. The system is not what makes it valuable. The years are.