Tuesday, April 24, 2007

I have a little black book

I’ve been carrying it around in case of a writing emergency since about March last year. I wanted a portable outlet for creative thought, personal recording, and a sturdy archive for my spontaneous ideas and daydreams. So I bought it one day at Barnes & Noble.

It’s divided into several sections. Here is an example from each:

Business Ideas:

Local newspaper

Travel Dreams:
Northern Africa/Southern Europe tour: Morocco, Tunisia, Malta, Lybia, Egypt
Camels a must—travel part of the journey through the desert a la T.E. Lawrence
Sail to Malta

Brilliant Ideas:
Make a kite from scratch

Thoughts:
I will refrain from example—this is more personal, like a more mobile version of my journal

Quotations:
He explained to them that history was like an old house at night. With all the lamps lit. And ancestors whispering inside.
“To understand history," Chacko said, "we have to go inside and listen to what they’re saying. And look at the books and the pictures on the wall. And smell the smells.” –Arundhati Roy in The God of Small Things

Because sometimes I want to write, and I want to write now.

1 comments:

Amanda said...

A friend of mine is an essayist. He carries around a piece of computer paper folded up in his back left pocket. I decided to do something similar; I bought a pocket-sized notepad from BYU's Museum of Art gift shop.

My notes so far:
My sister's address in Phoenix,
notes from my grad school prep course,
a reminder to write my home teacher a thank-you note,
and the idea to someday write an essay about Keats' negative capability and Schiller's dialectical opposition.

A poor start. Anyway, Jared, keep up the good work; I especially liked the idea of sailing to Malta.