Do You Have A Commonplace Book?

It can help you make better content.

Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash

It’s no secret that I get a lot of notebooks. I sometimes order them online. (For example, my to-do notebook and planner come from Bando, as do my pens. They make my brain feel better.)

I have one notebook to track moods and general things that I use to refer to when I’m in the mood to write about personal accounts. I also have what many people call a commonplace book.

If you write about history, politics, science, economics, or psychology, I think you need one

What’s a commonplace book?

A commonplace book is a book in which you write down new facts that you learn day after day. For example, let’s say that you watch a news article that tells you that X number of students are getting straight A’s.

If that fact piques your interest, you’d write it in the commonplace book. I personally also try to jot down the source where I learned about it. If it’s from a specific person, I mention who told that to me.

For example, I might write:

“On BBC today, I saw that there was a sport that involved rolling a large wheel of cheese down a hill and having people chase after it. This is a centuries-old tradition.”

Neat, right?

How do I use commonplace books?

I like to stick to a couple of rules with them…

No Opinions

I do not write anything about what it could mean, because in many cases, those types of facts can be reused and I want to keep opinions out of it. It can cloud my brainstorming.

It can also cause me to mix up facts and opinions, which can lead to bad writing.

Group Facts Together

I noticed that I tend to go on research benders. Sometimes, I will watch a World War II documentary and go, “Okay, I want to find out more about the reaction of people from D-Day,” and then I’ll literally watch tons of documentaries and books about it.

I do my best to group facts from my binges together. It acts as a good record of what’s going on in my mind. When I write, having groups of similar facts together can also make research a breeze.

Read & Reread

Do you ever have moments where your writers’ block is just not having it? When your brain doesn’t want to brain, leafing through a commonplace book is a smart way to make ideas happen.

There have been a lot of moments when I leafed through old commonplace books, saw a statistic or a common fact, and saw it in a new light. Don’t discount reusing old facts to drum up new ideas.

What do I use for a commonplace book?

Honestly? I get small notebooks that I find to be cute from places like Five Below or Target. I usually bundle this with books that catch my eye for either my regular writing, culinary writing, or writing style research.

Boom. It’s a book day. Just pick a notebook you feel comfortable writing in and keep it by your desk. You’ll be glad you did.

You can also go digital.

I’ve seen some people take their commonplace book journaling to a digital ground like Evernote, Google Docs, and Google Keep. Whether you want to do that is up to you. If you are a little bit more of a globetrotter than I am, it might make sense.

However, that’s not my cup of tea. I’m old school.

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