Notice your secret wishes, write them down
There’s a slip of paper I stick on the first page of a new notebook, moving it from book to book as I fill them up.
Dreams
Memories
Zero drafts
Project notes
Obsessions
Feelings
Experiences
Questions
Observations
A list to remind me what the notebook is for. Funny: I forgot to include Quotes, even though all my notebooks are filled with lines & passages copied from things I’ve read. Really my most reliable starting point.
In a recent newsletter, I wrote about Kim Stafford’s four-step journaling process that results in a poem a day for him—a rather amazing output, to be sure, but he is committed to getting something down quickly and posting it as a kind of love letter to the world.
I love collecting the quick-capture habits of other artists, writers, poets. The thinking-out-loud, the learning-in-public. I’ve had periods when that was my habit, too. Write fast and hit publish.
I’m grateful that was my very nearly daily habit (!) when my kids were little. So many stories and remarks I would have forgotten! They tell me they still like to roam through the archives, revisiting their smaller selves there.
Something I’m mapping in my notebook lately: impulses. The course or book or product that tempts me. Why? What is the secret wish it promises to grant? Do I already possess the power to grant it on my own?
Secret wishes, gosh. So many of them. And some not-at-all secret ones, now tucked up for a small window of dormancy, gathering nourishment, fattening up for the season to come.
Kortney Garrison says:
“Something I’m mapping in my notebook lately: impulses. The course or book or product that tempts me. Why? What is the secret wish it promises to grant? Do I already possess the power to grant it on my own?”
Oh these are powerful questions to hold! Sounds very much like John Holt to me. Sounds like these are questions for wintering.
I’m copying out your list and putting it in my 2025 planner….not as a reminder of what goes in the planner, but just a nudge toward the things I want to be about.
On November 12, 2024 at 5:40 am
Melissa Wiley says:
I need to add “impulses” to that flyleaf note when I move it to the next notebook. Which is satisfyingly likely to be next week. I love starting a new notebook at the beginning of a season, but it doesn’t always map out that way. 🙂
On November 22, 2024 at 3:25 pm
KC says:
Ohhhh impulses is brilliant. I’m going to have to think more about that…
On November 12, 2024 at 9:27 am
Melissa Wiley says:
It’s making me aware of just how impulse-driven the internet has made me! Shiny new objects/classes/books/ideas/systems at every turn! Eek.
On November 22, 2024 at 3:26 pm