“When you find yourself in a hole, don’t scramble around tryin’ to get out. Stay down there in the dark for a while, and dig for something shiny.” Betsy Cox
So we begin
I first heard Betsy Cox say “Dig for something shiny” in my last workshop as a student at the MFA Writing Seminars at Bennington College. We all laughed, but we never forgot it. In the years since graduation, I’ve heard numerous classmates from that workshop repeat the line. I typed it up in large letters, printed it on bright red paper and taped it on my office door. My own students read it aloud in their Virginia drawls as they enter and leave my office. The words resonate with those who hear or read them.
For years I’ve gathered these kinds of bits and pieces, as I suspect most writers and thinkers do, mostly in my favorite old-fashioned black and white composition books, quotes, lines of poetry or songs, even recipes, hand-copied on to paper. I’ll probably always do so. But I also love the internet. I love the rapidity of the search and the global nature of what can be discovered there. I keep a personal blog, and I’ve met some amazing minds via the web. From Vancouver to Dublin, I’ve been fortunate through my blog to encounter people who share my love of both the book and the net.
More, as I’ve built a Creative Writing program at our small liberal arts college in Virginia over these last five years, I’ve become acutely aware of how vital it is that my students, these young writers, be digitally savvy, technologically competitive, if they are to make lives as men and women of letters in an already tough market. To that end, we’ve begun requiring them to keep professional websites, blogs of varying natures, and this–my favorite of things–the commonplace book.
Commonplace Books
Commonplace books involve the noting, collecting and archiving of materials.
“Commonplace-book. Formerly Book of common places. orig. A book in which ‘commonplaces’ or passages important for reference were collected, usually under general heads; hence, a book in which one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to, with or without arrangement. First usage recorded: 1578.” (OED)
Commonplace books (or commonplaces) emerged in the 15th century with the availability of cheap paper for writing, mainly in England. They were a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. They were essentially scrapbooks filled with items of every kind: medical recipes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas. Commonplaces were used by readers, writers, students, and humanists as an aid for remembering useful concepts or facts they had learned. Each commonplace book was unique to its creator’s particular interests. Producing a commonplace is known as commonplacing.
A more contemporary understanding of a commonplace book is as follows: “Commonplaces are small nuggets of language that carry a lot of weight for a particular group or in society at large, at a given time. They can be slogans, bumper stickers, catch-phrases, or simply pieces of language that we use all of the time, but which are more complicated than we realize, perhaps because they are so very common. Because they can be evoked in the same way as a slogan or an idea, objects such as ‘the flag,’ and documents such as ‘The Constitution’ (especially ‘The First Amendment’ and ‘The Second Amendment’) also function as commonplaces in rhetoric.”–”Commonplaces: An Introduction,” Professor John Hilgart, English Department, Rhodes College, and Professor Van E. Hillard, First-Year Writing Program, Duke University
Brett Lott, in his essay “Toward a Definition of Creative Nonfiction,” refers to the writer “writing about oneself in relation to the subject at hand”–in relation to the world. The commonplace book allows us to record those moments through which we relate–respond–interact–to the words of others, to the world about us.
This one, I hope, will serve as an example for not only my students, but also for others interested in keeping the wonderful tradition of commonplacing alive.
