On Keeping a Commonplace Book

Victor Gilbert, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I love notebooks—I think every writer loves notebooks. There’s something about a virgin piece of paper and the unbent binding that beckons the writer onto some adventure. It becomes a new companion. A friend, a lover. Someone to whom we pour out a best and silliest ideas. Some of it is useful, some of it is forgotten. The rest is chaff, the nonsense we jot down for kindling in the furnace of the imagination.

If you’re like me, you rarely—if ever—finish out that notebook. The paper yellows, the spirals bend, the corners crease, and it takes up space in a closet. Half-used, half-remembered. Sometimes I stumble upon an old notebook and thumb through it, grinning at the little spark that become that story or that poem or got reworked into a greater whole.

I collect those bits and add them into a binder or another notebook. The rest, like I said above. Is chaff. I don’t discard it because it was useful when I put it down, but I’ve outgrown the idea. I still respect it.

A few years ago, I came upon the Latin word “Florilegium.” Or, “a gathering of flowers.”

Medieval Scholars kept a kind of commonplace book, a literal notebook collection of Scripture, Patristic sayings, ideas, etc. for the purpose of writing Sermons. They called these books Florilegium.

This got me thinking.

First, what a wonderful concept—gathering flowers. And gathering flowers, not to destroy a lovely growing thing, but the kind of metaphysical flower we call Wisdom.

Secondly, there are so many kinds of flowers. Why stop at wisdom? Why not pick one because I think it’s pretty? Or because it means something to me? Or because the aesthetic is something so powerful I must collect it with the hope of planting something half that brilliant?

Thirdly, I began to wonder what would happen if I finished one of those notebooks? As in used up all the paper, front to back?

To make sure I actually accomplished this massive feat, I bought a nice notebook. Its leather bound with cream colored lined paper, and personalized with my name and the book’s title: Florilegium, “a gathering of flowers.” I then bought a fountain pen. If I was going to do this, I wanted to do it as ritualistically as possible. I wanted to make it a devotion.

My first entry tells you a little about where I was when I first began gathering flowers.

“…I believe; help my unbelief!”
Mark 9:24

There are parts of this volume (there are two at the time of writing this post) that I can read and feel a wash of memories. There are others that are there because I like them.

Some hold a rich degree of meaning to me:

I am in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things which I dare not confess to my own soul. God keep me, if only for the sake of those dear to me!
Bram Stoker, Dracula

Others are for pure aesthetics:

Paul-Muad’Dib remembered that there had been a meal heavy with spice essence.
Frank Herbert, Dune

The more I think on these flowers, the more I see a collage of the writer I want to be.

My handwriting grew sloppier the more I used the book, not because it became a burden, but because I had so much to write down. I dumped the fancy pens and went for whatever pen I had at hand.

This bouquet has become personal to me. The casual reader would find something deeply intimate, and yet come away knowing hardly anything about me. Some of the quotes connect to thoughts, others seem so jarringly out of place that the ideas may appear schizophrenic.

Only I know what Mona Lisa Overdrive has to do with Christ Jesus. Only I know why Chesterton’s work sits next to Frank Herbert’s or why the Spiritual Combat takes up a majority of pages, why I only quote my favorite novel once.

I don’t need anyone to see the pattern—if there even is one. I read what comes to me, what seems fun and profitable as I find it. I collect what I like or what makes me think or what I think sound cool.

And that is why I think a commonplace book is good practice. Not just for writers, but for people. As a purely human exercise.

You don’t even have to read to keep one. Movies, or TV, or friends, have just as much to say to us as anything else. Hell, you don’t even have to keep a book! A blog is just as useful, or just a text sheet on your computer.

The only thing I think you shouldn’t do it make any kind of order of it. Pick flowers as you come upon them. Try it for a year, I think you’ll find that what you thought was a bouquet of cut flowers, is actually a healthy, growing garden.

Here’s where you can read me!

Follow me on Twitter/X.

Above: A Parisian Flower Market. Oil on Canvas. Victor Gabriel Gilbert 1847-1933. French.

April 6, 2024 1

Tripping over Easter Eggs

Ninara from Helsinki, Finland, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

It probably started with the Marvel movies. Not references themselves, but the relentless, in your face, Easter eggs that constitute a meaningless dog whistling. “Hey fellow nerds,” this little pop culture reference seems to say, “remember this cool thing? Only serious fans remember this obscure piece of ephemera!”

With Disney’s permission via example, pop culture easter eggs suddenly became something I started tripping over, especially in the fiction of the last decade or so. Not just in movies and tv, but in books.

For the first few years, I appreciated having my nerdy ego stroked. I liked that I was more familiar with Hawkeye than my friends, I liked that I could smugly explain the significance of a clunky piece of written dialogue, I liked that I could state “that’s from Dungeons and Dragons.”

But, as I got older, the charm wore off.

The clumsy, often non-sequitur references felt less like a wink and a nod and more like a slap to the face. Not someone hinting at me that they enjoy the things I enjoy, but more like a corporate apparatchik with no interest in the thing I’m interested in trying to convince me that they don’t hold me and very reference itself in contempt.

I can’t take a reference and by extension the writer who makes it, seriously anymore.

Take, for example, the Wilhem Scream of cinema fame. What started out as a piece of cost-saving sound design, Star Wars turned it into a “pop culture icon,” and now has become so ubiquitous it’s in approximately 400 films. As an inside joke, it’s bereft of any meaning. It breaks tension, it breaks the cohesion—it calls attention to itself.

Whenever I hear the Wilhem Scream, I think “oh yeah, that’s right. I’m watching a movie.”

When you’re writing a story, this breaking of immersion can be disastrous.

The willing suspension of disbelief is an unspoken contract between the reader and the writer. In exchange for a good yarn, the reader willingly suspends their skepticism. They simply accept faster-than-light travel, magical talking swords, or healing crystals, despite that logic and reason dictate those things as impossible. A good story doesn’t have to be realistic, but the logic of your constructed world must be internally consistent.

Constructed being the operative word—all written stories are, by the nature of story, contrived.

A written story must follow certain laws. The laws of grammar, spelling, and language, the rules regarding structure, character typology, typeface, cultural mores, etcetera.

When a reader opens a book and escapes into the world that a writer has created, the last thing the writer wants is to slam on the brakes and make the reader remember “oh yeah, that’s right. I’m reading a book.”

Do not call attention to your grammar. Do not call attention to your clever typeface. Do no call attention to a piece of media they might very well rather be enjoying than your story.

When I read a book, I don’t want to be taken out of your story, not even to laugh, not even to feel smug. I’m giving you my attention, respect my time and give me a good story.

Regarding Video Games

The term Easter Egg comes from the world of programming. It’s tempting the call them a “tradition.” I would be the first to admit that I enjoy the occasional references that I’ve found in my favorite games.

Most of the time, the references must be hunted down, hence “Easter egg.” The player can choose to actively look for them or not. Engagement is optional. That doesn’t mean I’ve never stumbled upon an obvious reference and had to look it up in order to understand it, but it does mean that I can choose not to participate in the hunt itself.

Unlike video games, books are wholistic. By reading, I must engage with the totality of the work, references, grammar, structure, and all. A cringy, out-of-place pop culture reference takes up precious space, both in the reader’s imagination and in the physical work.

Easter eggs can be stumbling blocks, or worse—an assault on the good tastes of a reader, who, out of the all the stories in the world, picked yours. Respect their good taste and don’t remind them they’re reading a book. Instead, let them escape into your world and grieve when they must put it down.

Above: The Renaissance Easter Egg, a Fabergé Egg, part of the Easter Series. Mikhail Perkhin 1860-1903, Russian. Materials: Gold, rose-cut diamonds, agate, rubies. Housed in the Blue Room of the Fabergé Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.

You can find my written works here. Follow me on X/Twitter.

March 9, 2024 0

Anvil #4 – Pre-orders are Live!

Carl Geyling, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Read me in Anvil Issue #4

I’ve hammered out another short story for Anvil. Pre-orders for issue 4 are currently live on IronAgeMedia. The guys at IronAgeMedia are always great to work with and I can’t wait for you guys to get your hands on this issue! More details to come.

While you’re checking out that pre-order, and if you haven’t already picked one up, don’t miss Issue #2, in print and digital. Anvil #2 features my my short story Afflicted: Nourritures les Ver. Here’s the blurb:

Amélia Mitre is Afflicted. Cursed by a pact of her own making, she is made to follow the Weird Way of Scealfe, God of Death of Decay. Summoned to the industrializing city of Beauanne, the Cursed Doctor finds herself investigating a disturbing disease that defies the laws of nature and therefore, the laws of her dark patron. She must discover the origins of the plague and punish anyone foolish enough to pretend rivalry with the God of Death.

Follow me on X (formerly Twitter)

Check out my other written works here.

Above: Three Workers in the Iron Works. Oil on panel. Carl Geyling, Austrian (1814–1880), founder of Carl Geyling’s Erben a stained glass company.

March 3, 2024 0

Adventures in Storytelling 6

Entry 6, gathering brushwood.

There was a time in my life when I didn’t write short stories. And by that, I mean that I had this youthful, naïve belief that I was a “novelist” and would never write a short story. It was really just an excuse for the simple fact that I didn’t know how to write one.

In school we read tons of short stories—I even liked some of them—although none of them covered genres I read for pleasure. As a reader I’ve always gravitated towards fantasy. I like stories with swords and sorcery, something with an evil to overcome, heroes I can click with, and an adventure I can get lost in.

Needless to say, the “great American short story” was not something I read unless a class made me. I don’t like Virgina Woolfe, I loathe Mark Twain, I don’t have the life experiences of Ernest Hemmingway or Edgar Allen Poe.

Short stories always felt like opaque little pieces of highbrow literature. High art, rich in irony, drama, and meaning, with messages or morals I usually disagreed with or a muddy, bleak modernist outlook I definitely disagreed with. They were the kinds of work I was expected to read and write essays about. All of them far from the kitschy, heartfelt fantasy I love.

When I finished high school and was able to distance myself from the drudgery of school work and look at short stories as a piece of fiction and not as an assignment, I bent a little. I discovered H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Howard, gained a deeper appreciation for Edgar Allen Poe, read Hemmingway and fell in love with him.

I still don’t like Virginia Woolfe, and I’ll never enjoy Mark Twain. But I found Flanery O’Connor and the short works of Leo Tolstoy. While F. Scott FitzGerald has become one of my favorite authors.

But before any of that, I over-corrected and spent the first few years out if high school reading nothing but absolute junk food. I flew through every shallow, vapid, horrendous teen-fic fantasy I could get my young adult hands on.

I knew I was reading dreck, and yet I still imbibed. I was happy to drink up any piece of romance-laden, hand-wringing melodrama. I could slurp them up within a couple of days; the characters, setting, and story promptly forgotten as soon as I picked up the next terrible piece of mass produced, corporate trash.

And so my stubborn, arrogant “I’m a novelist” attitude metastasized. I wanted to be like these YA authors, you know, but better.

But one day, I woke up and couldn’t stand the idea of picking up another novel.

Every book I’d read from high school until about 2015 was exactly the same. A plucky heroine who isn’t like other girls meets about 2.5 boys who needlessly squabble over her while the overtly masculine villain schemes and makes sexist comments until the heroine discovers her inner warrior and defeats the poorly contrived symbol of the patriarchy.

After that I found myself only reading non-fiction. Medieval history, specifically.

As I exhausted my local library’s poorly stocked history section, I turned to medieval literature. I read Dante’s Divine Comedy and Boccacio’s Decameron, various Arthurian tales, poems, etc.

I fell in love with Dante. His entry into my life spurred me into a frenzied trajectory that would alter the way I viewed the world. I’ll have more to say about my patron, later. Just know that it was through his work and my desire to understand it that lead me to reading Aristotle, Virgil, Plato, Homer, Plutarch, Machiavelli, Gottfried, Thomas Aquanis, Cretien de Toyes—

About the time the COVID lockdowns began, I started to really miss fiction. I wanted to escape, I wanted to be anywhere but in America circa 2020.

I was mentally exhausted by the drama going on in my real life, I was working full time, trying to write on the weekends. I watched as my future plans evaporated under the corrupting heat of COVID. I couldn’t focus on history the way I had been.

I tried to hop back into fiction; picking up some paperbacks from my local used book store.

I couldn’t read them. I didn’t have the patience or, rather, the tolerance for modern fiction anymore. I’d been feasting at the table of the Greats for so long, a mass market paperback seemed like thin gruel.

I mentioned in the last entry that COVID was a turning point for me. I had committed years of my life working on a novel that was too long to be published by an unknown author. I couldn’t abandon it; I won’t abandon it. But it was clear that I needed a different strategy.

As my life took a dark turn, I began to pull apart the things that bothered me about modern fiction—the pandering, the limp prose, the lame moralizing, the overwrought, needlessly complicated plots masquerading as “subversion”, the tiresome deconstructed heroes.

I knew I wasn’t the only one getting sick of the same-old-same-old, I just needed to find an in. An “in,” by the way, that I’m still searching for.

Regardless of my chances of success I knew I could either quit entirely or make myself a better writer.

Dante loomed large in the back of my thoughts during this time, pushing me onward. He demanded excellence of himself, trusted that he possessed the tools to reach the absolute heights of his craft. Could I do no less?

What I began to understand was that I needed to learn how to write short.

Looking back, it felt like a monumental task.

The first thing I needed to do was relearn to enjoy fiction.

The Lord of the Rings has eluded me my entire life. This fact is highly embarrassing to me, but there is it. I could never make it past Tom Bombadil. I just couldn’t fall in love with the books like it seemed everyone else could. I knew tons about the books and about Tolkien but the prose never sang to me the way it seemed to sing to others.

I was aware of their Anglo-Saxon/Germanic heritage. I knew that Tolkien wrote the Hobbit specifically to be read aloud to children. I was also highly familiar with Norse, Anglo-Saxon, and Germanic storytelling and poetry because every medievalist, amateur or not, eventually realizes that they have to read Beowulf and the Norse Sagas in order better understand the cultural context of the history they’re studying.

These people did not write things down. Beowulf isn’t meant to be read; it’s meant to be heard.

I made the logical conclusion that I should listen to the Lord of the Rings. I bought an Audible subscription and started to relearn how to enjoy fiction.

It worked. Not only did I finally fall under the spell of LoTR, I rekindled a passion for fiction.

I began to listen to books at work, before bed, while I brushed my teeth, while I did the dishes, while I went for a walk. I even listened and enjoyed books I’d written off as unreadable while in high school.

Never in my life had I thought I would stay up until 2am listening to Pride and Prejudice. But I did that. More so, a book I once disliked became a book I enjoyed.

While I listened to the more time-intensive works, I started reading shorter ones. I was already a fan of H.P. Lovecraft, so I went looking for others like him.

I found myself getting really into horror, I picked up a lot of classic ghost stories. I learned about Weird Tales and met Robert Howard. I fell in love with his Conan the Cimmerian.

It was Howard that really woke me up to the possibilities of short fiction.

Conan is a fantasy hero; he gets by with a canny mix of cleverness and brute strength. He fights monsters, he steals treasure, he saves maidens, he even becomes a king.

All of Conan’s stories are self-contained and short (usually under 50,000). You can read Tower of the Elephant, or the Jewels of Gwahlur, skip Red Nail (you shouldn’t), and still get to know Conan and lose yourself in the Hyperborean Age.

Once I worked my way through every completed Conan tale, I knew that fire was kindled again. My stubborn unwillingness to learn was broken down, the debris removed as brushwood for the firepit.

While I was still adventuring with Conan, I took a chance and penned an old-school sci-fi short story and submitted it to Cirsova Magazine. It was my first, published in Spring 2023. I’m going to break that one open in the next entry.

For now, let me leave you with what writing this entry has taught me. I refuse to give up. Writing has the flavor of a Vocation. I am called to it.

Even if the fire goes out, as it did with me especially during that depression spiral of 2020-2022, you can start another fire, relearn, reframe.

Humble yourself and commit. Gather brushwood to burn, you’ll be surprised at what happens when you pledge yourself to becoming a better writer. It takes just one spark to set everything ablaze.

Above: Saint Paul bitten by a viper in Malta. Ceiling of the Gallery of Geographical Maps in Vatican City.

February 10, 2024 0

I made a Twitter/X

Eli Francis elifrancis, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

I’ll probably regret it.

The New Year is always a fascinating time. The few short, almost ethereal days between Christmas and New Years always demands a moment of introspection. I have a lot to be grateful for. This is the first year I published anything, now to have three works under my belt…I’ve achieved a lot this year, particularly in writing.

But achievement means nothing if it isn’t accompanied by a drive to do more. This year, I have a lot of plans. I want to eat healthier, exercise more, and continue my writing journey. I also want to keep working on this blog, build connections with fellow writers, work on a novel, continue my forward momentum as a short story writer.

I’m old enough to know that goals aren’t achieved without stepping out of your comfort zone. I want to make connections with the amazing writers I’ve found my writing sandwiched between. I also want to find a way to get direct feedback from my readers. About a month ago I realized that meant I needed to expand my social media bubble.

I loathe social media and for the most part I’ve done an excellent job of keeping it out of my life. That’s probably why I dragged my feet on making a Twitter/X account. But it’s clear, that’s the easiest way to engage with people.

So I did it. I created a Twitter/X account. You can follow me there @ElflandSalon .

Hopefully, I’ll get over my fear of online social interactions and actually use the bloody thing. We’ll see, I’ve never been particularly good at keeping New Years resolutions.

January 14, 2024 0