Reading, making notes, having ideas

Reading, making notes, having ideas

When you have found the books and articles you are going to read, you will need to read them. Here are the golden rules:

(iii) Always carry a notebook
Always read interactively
File and rewrite the notes so you can find them again
Make a bibliography

I will explain. The key is: you are in the business of making a collection of your ideas (do I have to say it again?) about literary texts. These can come to you at any time. If you don't write them down, you will probably forget them. If you do write them down, you will probably think of some more ideas while you are writing. Write them down too. It doesn't matter if they don't seem very good: just write them down. Carry one of those spiral-bound shorthand notebooks at all times, and, if an idea comes to you, however intimate or urgent the accompanying moment, write it down. No-one need ever see this notebook, so you need feel no self-consciousness about what you write in it.

This is perhaps the most useful attribute of the shorthand notebook: it beats the censor. The censor is the cause of writer's block: the small voice inside your head that tells you that what you're writing is rubbish. In your notebook you can ignore that voice, and as a result you will accumulate ideas. Some will be good, some bad; when you re-read the notes you can sort out one from the other more rationally than while under the stress of creative writing. Thus the censor has been by-passed.

4.1 Making notes

The best time to have ideas is when you are reading, either a literary text or a work of criticism. This is where note-taking comes in. Don't make notes in the form of summaries, unless you need it to help you remember a plot (lecture notes are an exception to this): it's normally best to read the thing again (and get more ideas the second time round). But always, always, read with a pen and notebook to hand: read interactively. Think about what you're reading and write down your thoughts. Always. When a thought occurs under these circumstances it will be in reaction to a piece of the text at hand: a quotation. Copy out the quote, and a page reference so you can find it again to check it if necessary, and then put your idea underneath it. If you tie the idea in with the quote in this way, then your ideas will always be text-based and close to the concrete life of the text, as Leavis might possibly have said.

Always write one idea and one idea only per page of the shorthand notebook. Why? So that you can file them. Once a week go through all of the notes that you've accumulated during the week. Take them out of the shorthand notebook: tear them out, or remove the spiral. You put headings on each note, throwing away the dross (the obvious dross, that is: dross can turn to gold if left to itself for a bit). Rewrite if necessary; make more notes if more ideas occur. Then file them in a way that you can find them again. Make sure you know where all the quotes came from: editions, page numbers, and so on.

You will find more about note taking in my Guided Reading lecture, here.

4.2 Bibliography

For this you need a booklist, either computer-based, or in the form of a card index. A bibliography, some call it. Every book you read should have its details listed in your master book-list, your card index or computer file. Author/s, title, date, publisher, shelf mark, place of publication. I repeat: every single book and article you read should be in this list. In (only) two and a bit years' time when you are desperately trying to find something original to say about The Book of the Duchess for an exam that is going to happen in a few weeks' or days' time, you will need this booklist and these carefully filed notes, containing your ideas about literary texts. Believe me.