What, you ask, is a daybook? It is simply a notebook that you tuck into your bag and carry with you everywhere—on the train ride, in line at the grocery store, on a walk in the park. At any given point in the day, take it out and jot down a few lines. In three of my five classes this semester, I’m required to keep regular entries in this daybook; I can easily say it’s my favorite assignment of my college experience.
In his book The Craft of Revision, Donald Murray describes his daybook this way:
It is a writer’s log, a field book, a lab book, a business account book. I chose “daybook” for its very ordinariness. It is not a literary book but a working notebook in which I keep account of my daily writing, record problems and solutions, new ideas, observation notes, quotes from writers, and these day sketches. It is a place where I can paste things I want to reread, a place to make notes, draft titles, lists, lines, what I am talking to myself about.
There are several approaches to keeping a daybook—and none of them are the “right way.” A daybook can be full of scribbles, scraps of thoughts, musings, ponderings, lists, quotes, journal entires, observations, snippets of dialogue, sketches of a scene, playlists of songs you hear over the radio.
The only requirement: it must allowed to be a mess.
I’m meant to write a full page in this notebook five days a week. Often I write far more than that. Once I start, it’s hard to stop. I’m a recovering perfectionist, so it takes effort for me to allow myself to make a complete mess and write without expectation for myself.
Julia Cameron recommends this in her book “The Artist’s Way.” She defines morning pages as “three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning.” This exercise allows you to dump ideas and frustrations and mental brain lint onto paper, get it out of your head.
I’m going into the sixth week now, and the daybook is quickly becoming my anchor in the midst of tumultuous academic life. When there’s a quote or a poem in class that I want to remember, I jot it down. When I share an interesting conversation with a friend, I write down the main points in my daybook to revisit later. If I think up a fleeting image or thought for a short story or a poem, I scribble it madly in these pages while the idea is still warm.
Keeping a daybook helps me pay attention to the world around me. It allows me a place to capture all these fluttering thoughts and frustrations and joys which fluctuate through me on a daily basis. It clears my mind of flotsam and frippery, helps me articulate what I’m thinking or feeling, and paves the way for creative thoughts.
My challenge to you this week is this: grab a notebook, carry it with you everywhere. Let it be messy. Let it be inspiring. Let yourself notice the world around you.
<3 Olivia Grace
