The Journal: Commonplace Books

I’ve always been pretty organized when it comes to my journals, which sounds like a good thing. Right? I can always find my stories, poems are organized by year… But it’s distracting to set up, and impossible to write anything on the fly if you have the wrong journal with you. As a kid, I took all my notes in my diary: I always had it on me, it was a journal I loved, and I always knew where to find my school notes, my maps, my keys to secret languages… Everything I scribbled down.

At the beginning of term last year, a friend of mine mentioned she was going to try and write in a single notebook for the duration of the program, and I decided to return to my roots.

I’m glad I did, because the pandemic hit in the second term.

The commonplace book has been around since antiquity. It’s a simple concept: it’s literally just a book of stuff. Quotes, letters, drawings, notes, recipes, pressed flowers, musings, schedules—whatever pops into a person’s head.

My book from this year includes notes on Kallerian, plotting for the various stories I wrote and edited this year, notes from school, poems, rough drafts, the occasional bit of poorly-anonymized fanfiction, ink sketches. I took the book with me to Inverness and Iceland, wrote in classes, wrote to the sound of bagpipes, wrote on mountaintops, wrote on beaches. When the quarantine hit, while I was staying in a (probably not legal) rented flat and watching the Prime Minister’s announcement on my laptop, the book was in my lap.

When the world was shut down and were only allowed out for one or two walks a day, I found myself with the honest-to-goodness hobby of wildflower picking. Pressed in my commonplace book are daisies, Queen Anne’s lace, violets, cherry blossoms.

For my birthday, celebrated in silence, I asked for letters. Tucked into the pages of my commonplace book are letters from my family, particularly a letter from my mother which is written in a dozen colors, at varying angles, and sporting drawings of our adventures and inside jokes.

I’ve had it for a year. Possibly the most intense year of my life, and certainly the most globally impactful.

I have twenty pages left.