On keeping a commonplace book

This is a sample note shipped with the site so the archive is not empty. Replace it, or set sample: false when you publish your own piece.

This is a sample note. It is here so the archive has more than a single voice-of-God introductory essay. I also wanted a piece about method, because a publishing site without a method becomes a graveyard of one-off posts.

A commonplace book is an old, unfashionable tool: a notebook where you copy lines that are not yours. Quotes, scraps, a paragraph that rearranged the week. You do not have to agree with the author. You only have to admit that the sentence did some work.

Why copy instead of bookmark

Bookmarks rot. They pile up in a browser the way receipts pile up in a bowl. Copying by hand — or, less romantically, pasting into a dated file — forces a second reading. You meet the sentence again as a typist. You notice the hinge you skipped the first time.

I do not treat the commonplace book as a personal brand factory. Most entries will never become an essay. That is the correct ratio. The book is a compost heap. Occasionally something grows.

What belongs on the public site

Not the heap. The public site is for notes that have a shape: a claim, an example, an ending. The private book can stay messy. If a copied line keeps returning, that is a signal. Then I write around it in my own words, and only that second piece is offered a URL.

This distinction keeps the archive from becoming a quote blog. Readers did not come here to watch me underline a library.

A public page should be able to survive the author leaving the room.

That is the test I want to keep. If a note only works because I am there to explain it, it is still a draft.

A practical rule

One file, one idea. Frontmatter for the date and the excerpt. Tags only when they will still mean something in a year. If the piece is not ready, draft: true keeps it off the home page, out of RSS, and out of the sitemap.

The method is deliberately boring. The writing does not have to be.