I’ve been a notebook
buyer since I was very young, and could spend my weekly allowance at Jolly Five & Ten, while our father did the grocery shopping. I liked to buy small 4-inch notebooks in different colors —but here’s the thing, I never
wrote in them. I didn’t want to spoil them! So, they sat in my sock drawer, waiting for me. For
years I did this. When I wrote, I wrote on binder paper—loose-leaf, not a bound notebook. Something about writing in a book, whether diary, journal, or sketchbook, terrified me.
While I still write on loose sheets of paper and yellow pads, I’ve lately been trying to keep my poems and other writing ideas in notebooks. I keep different kinds of notebooks, but that sounds more organized than it is. Most of them are a jumble of all kinds of written things. I have one notebook just for words and phrases I like. It’s a journalist’s notebook with unlined pages that a reporter-friend gave to me.
I keep a lined pad of paper beside me when I’m reading—sometimes it has white sheets and sometimes yellow. In it I jot down every phrase, image, or sentence that I love as I’m reading a given book. I do this with almost every novel I read. Here is a page I kept while reading ZORA AND ME by Victoria Bond.
When I’m researching a book of my own that I’m writing, I tend to keep my notes in composition books because they feel like school to me. Here is the notebook I used for a picture book biography coming out in 2017. I first began the research for it in 2006!
For my first book I LAY MY STITCHES DOWN: POEMS OF AMERICAN SLAVERY, I used several notebooks, a binder, and pads of yellow paper. I was making a quilt, researching slavery, and writing the poems, all at the same time. This is how I did it: I picked quilt block patterns that sounded like there
could be a connection to slavery—for example, Log Cabin or Cotton Boll. I drew up the pattern I’d use to sew the quilt block, and then asked all kinds of questions about it. I’d generate 30-50 questions for each quilt block. After that I’d start composing the poem for that block. Here is the first page of “Basket” questions for the final poem in STITCHES.
And here is the poem that grew partially from these questions:
Basket
Each night, I take my patches, blocks, and scraps
of fabric from the basket by the chair;
my thimble, thread, and needle comfort me.
I lay my stitches down and troubles fall
away. Before too long, I'm breathing with
the rhythm of my quilting -- listening
wide with every fiber of my soul:
the praise songs of my people; voices
of my kin; drumbeats of my motherland form
the threads that weave the fabric of my life.
I strongly believe one creative endeavor feeds another, and this definitely held true while I was working my quilt and the poems for I LAY MY STITCHES DOWN. I'd go back and forth between sewing and writing. Then when I needed to know some historical fact, I'd go off to the library to do a little research on basket-making or blacksmithing or the North Star or whatever. It was so much fun, I've decided to make a quilt for each book I write!
I’ve since found that asking questions about a photograph, a sculpture, or some object on my desk is my favorite exercise to do when I’m stuck—or when I’m beginning a new writing project.
You might wish to try this technique yourself. Look at a piece of artwork: painting, sculpture, quilt, postcard, paperweight--whatever.
Ask and list 50 questions about the object before writing!
Then begin. You will know the object intimately by this time -- it will turn into a beautiful poem.
Cynthia Grady is a poet and librarian living in New Mexico. You can learn more about her and her upcoming books at www.cynthiagrady.com.
Cynthia has generously offered a signed copy of I LAY MY STITCHES DOWN: POEMS OF AMERICAN SLAVERY to one commenter on this post. Please leave your comment by Sunday, October 11 to be entered into this drawing.
