Beside the Seine. These are the loveliest of moments in the notebook, for they expand. The very words I set down here are like the roots underground in winter. They look a little skimpy on the page, but they carry secret pages in them. (James Wright)
You ought to keep a notebook for several reasons. (And you ought to carry it with you.) A notebook is a reminder that you’re a writer and that what you’re currently doing while you’re out of the house, away from the desk, is taking notes toward your next novel. You know that you think differently when you have a pen in your hand—and you observe differently. You see what’s really there, not what’s supposed to be there. You keep a notebook to teach yourself to pay attention. You keep a notebook to encourage yourself to create. You keep a notebook to serve notice to the world—Writer at Work! When you’re writing a novel, it becomes a magnet for everything that happens in your life, and the notebook is where you store what the novel has attracted.
Writing regularly in your notebook keeps the creative juices churning; it preserves thoughts, images, overheard lines, dreams, whatever it is that catches your imagination. A notebook affords you the opportunity to write when you may only have five minutes to do so.
Writing engenders more writing. The image you capture now might show up in the novel you write in ten years. The notebook is the repository and source of writing material; the notebook is a refuge. Open it up when you need to think. Read what you’ve written; write about what you’ve just read.
Note-taking can be a creative act. It may not be your purpose to write a novel based on the image you’ve captured—birds nesting in a human skull—but once you get started, you may just keep writing. You don’t need much kindling to fire a novel.
My notebook is an anthology, so to speak. It’s not a diary or a journal. You can call it a journal if you must, or a daybook, a commonplace book, a scrapbook. Virginia Woolf called hers a holdall. It is not a daily record of occurrences. A writer’s diary might have the same entry every day: “Sat down to write at 9 A.M. Stopped at 8 P.M., had a drink, read, and went to sleep.” We don’t lead eventful lives except for those lives in our heads. The notebook is not meant to be an obsession, but a tool. Journal writers are not interested in facts, per se, but in stimulation. The notebook is not so much about what happened, as about what could happen.
It’s for your eyes only, not for publication. It doesn’t need to be neat, orderly, or logical. In fact, it ought to be a mess. You don’t need to have a system; only collect! Write down remarks that you hear or what you’ve read on the craft of writing, conversations overheard in restaurants; collect and tape in newspaper articles or photographs that you might use in a story sometime; write down phrases or words that might become titles or chapter headings or dialogue; list story ideas, titles, names, words, or images. Keep your senses alert and gather your data in the notebook.
The constant use of the notebook keeps you working and writing, and provides a mine of material to be used down the road. Keep anything pertinent to your development as a writer: character sketches, found poems, observations, all of the preliminary stuff for the first stages of the writing process. What you write down now goes toward all the writing you will ever do.
The sentence you overheard—“It’s good to be back, but where am I?”—might not be appropriate for the novel you’re working on, but might be the seed of the novel you’re going to write next. And you don’t need to know how that’ll come about. Trust in the material. A notebook is a warehouse, not a museum. You’re taking it down so it’s there when you need it. And you don’t need a system—write it all as fast as you can. The notebook is not an end, but a means.
Before we go on, I want you now to get a notebook if you don’t have one. We’re going to write. I use those blank, lined journals they sell at the chain bookstores. $5.99. Each one is 190 pages or so, and they last for months. I used to use the little three-by-five memo pads—and still do when it’s inconvenient to haul the big notebook around. And then at night I would transfer the memo notes to the larger book. A ringed binder will do, loose paper in manila folders will do. (I abandoned that method, however, when the desk got so cluttered I couldn’t work. The cat didn’t even have room to curl up and sleep.) Use what works for you, but don’t go spending a lot of money on a fancy notebook. (Don’t judge a notebook by its cover.) It’s not supposed to look good. After a while it won’t look good. It needs to be durable and functional, not decorative. It’s going to get beat up a bit, and you don’t want it falling apart. I’ll wait here while you go buy or fetch a notebook. Go ahead. We’ll take up the next paragraph when you get back.
Chekhov kept a notebook. He titled one of his notebooks “Themes, Thoughts, Notes, and Fragments.” Here’s an entry:
At twenty she loved Z., at twenty-four she married N. not because she loved him, but because she thought him a good, wise, ideal man. The couple lived happily; everyone envies them, and indeed their life passes smoothly and placidly; she is satisfied, and, when people discuss love, she says that for family life not love nor passion is wanted but affection. But once the music played suddenly, and, inside her heart, everything broke up like ice in spring; she remembered Z. and her love for him, and she thought with despair that her life was ruined, spoilt for ever, and that she was unhappy. Then it happened to her with the New Year greetings; when people wished her “New Happiness,” she indeed longed for new happiness.
Here’s why you needed to find a notebook. Right now you get to write this story in your notebook, the one that Chekhov never got around to writing.
Only your story happens this year in your town. (When Chekhov used an entry from his notebook, he crossed it out. And he would recopy entries from one book into another—this was a serious matter for Chekhov.) More correctly, you get to begin to take notes about the story. And when you’re finished, here are some more provocations from the master, all from his notebooks:
A pregnant woman with short arms and a long neck, like a kangaroo.
A serious phlegmatic doctor fell in love with a girl who danced very well, and, to please her, he started to learn a mazurka.
He flatters the authorities like a priest.
The ice cream is made of milk in which, as it were, the patients bathed.
One of the most fascinating notebooks is not a writer’s, but artist Leonardo da Vinci’s. His notebooks were “mirror written,” backwards from right to left. In his notebooks were notes on anatomy, music, painting, and sculpture; remarks about light; ideas for future projects; reminders about neighbors in possession of certain rare books; drawings; natural observations, such as “The shadows of plants are never black, for where the atmosphere penetrates there can never be utter darkness”; exercises, such as “Describe the tongue of the woodpecker and the jaw of the crocodile”; and sententiae, like this:
He who walks straight rarely falls.
We are deceived by promises and time disappoints us.
He who thinks little, errs much.
The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinion.
As I said, I use those 8 ½-by-11, hardbound notebooks. The first thing I do in the morning is pour my coffee and read through the newspaper looking for material (and checking the Red Sox score). When I find a story, I cut it out and use a glue stick to paste it into the notebook. Here’s a recent headline: MONKS FIGHT ON ROOF OF HOLIEST PLACE—“Eleven monks were treated in hospital after a fight broke out for control of the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.” Could I make that up?
If I’ve remembered a dream, I’ll write out what I can recall. I have far too many dreams of being at writers’ conferences, and they are never about teaching or about stories. They’re about trying to meet someone, anyone, at a restaurant. I’m always alone. I never find the person or the restaurant. No one else wants to hear my dreams. I suppose I could pay a shrink to listen, but I’d prefer to bring my anxiety to the page. Occasionally, a character winds up dreaming a dream a lot like mine.
I make notes about the novel or story I’m working on, and enter interesting facts, such as: “All Europeans descend from five females”; or curious behaviors, such as: “Chambermaid at the Hotel Gunther drinks water right out of the pitcher.” I write them down because something about them intrigued me, and I don’t know what it is or how I’ll exploit them. My job is to jot.
Here’s a magazine article about nanobes, the smallest form of terrestrial life—or are they? Here’s a rather sad entry: “Not many years ago—during our summer travels, we actually signed up for the Super 8 Motel Discount Plan. Stay ‘x’ number of nights and get another night free.”
I keep a list of possible titles, (“1-2-3 O’Leary”), and a list of names. Just now while writing, I got an e-mail from a woman in Panama City, Florida, inviting me to a writers’ conference (no doubt I’ll dream about it tonight—can’t find the oyster bar). Her name? River Jordan. I wrote it down. I’ve got names of businesses. A B&B called The Cat Dragged Inn. I saw it out of a bus window somewhere between Stratford and London. When I was looking for the name of a beauty parlor while writing Deep in the Shade of Paradise, I read through the notebooks and found the one I used: “Pug Wolfe’s Curl Up & Dye.” Pug Wolfe is a real beautician in Cleveland, Mississippi. My friend, the poet Carolyn Elkins, gets her hair done at “Pug’s New Generation Beauty Shop.” I stole Pug’s name. What I learned when the book came out was that Pug first wanted to call her shop “Curl Up & Dye,” but her family vetoed the idea. Maybe now, she’ll change it.
In my notebook, I also write down quotes on writing or on thinking. For example, Diane Arbus said, “I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.”
I keep lists of words that I want to use in my next novel: “carillonneur, cark, dogsbody [which my spell check just informed me is not a word—don’t trust spell check and don’t even install grammar check], brabble, hobbledehoy, scumble, skimble, frippet.”
I write about my childhood, about, say, old Mike Thompson who owned the little market at the corner, and how he read the Jewish Weekly at the register and totaled up our purchases in pencil on the brown paper bag that we’d carry home. When I think of Mike, I remember Whitey, who lived behind the store and was convinced the FBI had his teeth wired so they could read his thoughts; and Vito, who wound up in a shootout with some Oklahoma police force; and Carl Brin, who shot his junior high school teacher and stole my basketball and my baseball glove. If you have your pen in hand, one thing leads to another.
I glue in cartoons—I love Sylvia, postcards—the Moses Motel in Monroe, Louisiana—who knows what character might check in; and photographs of possible settings for scenes. If I hear a line that I like, I write it down: “I stayed up all night with this chicken, and you’re not going to eat it?” Or a situation: “A fundamentalist preacher is harassed and herded by a guy with a remote-control car.”
I write out ideas for future stories or poems or plays. You get the idea—whatever I want to hold onto, I write down. Now I’ve got it, and don’t need to be bothered with remembering it, and I can get on with the writing. When I write, I have the notebook on the desk for that which won’t fit in the story I’m working on. And I keep a memo pad or index cards around to write down the intrusions from the real world—“Buy cream.” “Call Jeffrey.” “Type notes for class.” I write them down and I forget them until I’ve finished writing. If I don’t write them down, they nag at me, distract me from the work. Joan Didion says that note taking is done by those of us who were “afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.” That pretty much describes fiction writers.
Now that you’ve got the notebook, take it with you. Try writing in different places. (Before you do, gather up all those scattered notes you have and enter all of them in the notebook.) Try to write in at least one new place a week if you can. Carry a list of writing exercises with you at all times if you are worried about having nothing to write. Whenever you get a chance in your day to sit, write. Write in a bar. Not one of these franchise fern bars, but the neighborhood pub. A place where people go to talk. Listen to the patrons. Jot down what they’re saying. That smell of cigarette smoke—how would you describe it? What does it remind you of? What are people wearing? What does that tell you about them? And at some point someone will ask you what you’re doing, and you’ll say you’re a writer, and he’ll tell you his story.
Write in a doctor’s office. Who’s there? Take a look at the magazine titles stacked on the coffee table. What mood does the place put you in? Write about that. Describe the sounds coming from beyond the pebbled glass window. What is unique about this doctor’s office? How is it different from every other doctor’s office in the world? Those folks waiting with you have stories. What do you imagine they are? Ask someone why they are there. Write about what happens.
Try writing in other places where people gather—cafés, malls, bus stops. If your characters drive expensive cars, then you might bring that notebook out to the country club and settle into the nineteenth hole. Write in a church, an old church if you can, a Catholic church if possible. Can you smell the incense? What is the effect of the light flooding through the stained glass? Write in a cemetery (a good source of names, by the way) or in a rowboat drifting on a pond. Write in an art museum. Write in a library. Libraries are great democratic institutions—we all show up there at one time or another. Write about the people you see and the books they are reading. Why is it that some people’s voices carry across the room?
You’re a writer now, and a writer writes. Any time, any place. That’s his or her job. So take your tools with you wherever you go. The Muse is as likely to sit across the bar from you as to come by your office for a chat, and you want to be prepared when she taps your shoulder and says, “Look at the ladies at the next table.” And you look over and see two elderly gals with face lifts, one of them telling the other about the Internet dating service she belongs to and about the loser she went out with the night before. “The first thing he said was, ‘Do you own a car?’ We went to Lolo’s Chicken and Waffles for dinner, and he let me pay the tab. I told him, ‘Have a nice life, Massimo.’” By now you ought to be writing as fast as you can. The stories are out there, but stories only happen to people who write them down.
Presidential elections. Right now a hospital is accusing labor organizers of using voodoo to frighten the workers into voting for union representation. And they’re serious. The recent Miami police chief and city manager Donald Warshaw was arrested for stealing money from the “Do the Right Thing Foundation” so he could buy tickets to Marlins’ games and nights out with his mistress. (Surreal postscript: in prison Warshaw taught classes to his fellow inmates. “Dress for Success,” “Communication Technique,” and “How to Find a Job.”) Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez has been indicted three times (but never convicted). In Hialeah Gardens, the miniskirt mayor was accused of hiring a hit man to kill her husband. She was convicted. Her husband testified on her behalf. Commissioner Humberto Hernandez went to jail for voter fraud. His wife was having an affair with his lawyer. He appealed his conviction. He also said, “If you’ve been here long enough, you know that nobody gives a flying fuck if you ran a clean campaign. Nobody gives a shit if you’re involved in absentee ballot fraud or what have you. The bottom line is that you won.” Crazy Joe Carollo and the X-man Xavier Suarez squared off in the Miami mayoral race, which Suarez apparently won until they tallied up the number of dead people who voted for him, some more than once. Suarez showed up in the middle of the night in his robe at a woman’s house. He was carrying a gun and wanted to know why she didn’t vote for him. Carollo (who redundantly vilified the INS agents who rescued [verb of choice] Elian as “atheists”: “They don’t believe in God.”) was arrested for throwing a teapot at his wife in a domestic disturbance. He showed up at a news conference with a Catholic priest at his side. U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey resigned from his job when he bit a stripper on the ass and charged a $900 bottle of champagne to his credit card and showed up later as lead attorney for Elian’s family. (You can still see Kendall commenting as a legal expert on CNN and other news outlets—they apparently think he’s a real lawyer and not the buffoon we know him to be.) City Commissioner Joe Gersten makes Kendall look virtuous. Joe reported his Mercedes stolen, but it turns out he’d leant it to his crack dealer and his prostitute friends. He fled to Australia where he’s trying to get his license to practice law. At a County Commission meeting, Chairwoman Gwen Margolis tried to cut off Commissioner Natacha Seijas in the middle of a funding appeal. Seijas told Margolis, “You’re going to leave in a body bag if you keep this up.” Operation Clean Sweep turned up lots of crooked judges (surprise, surprise—we elect them!), one of whom offered to turn over info to the bad guys about a confidential informant—for $50,000.
Several of the 9/11 highjackers lived within two miles of my house and worked out up the street at the Dania Health Club. The head of the Broward County teachers’ union was arrested for child pornography. There are currently five hundred children missing from the state’s child welfare system. The governor hires a guy to take over the system, a guy who has written favorably on corporal punishment. It goes on and on.