My last bit of advice on the wordriht life was this:
“Keep a commonplace book. Write down any notable phrases that occur to you, or that you have come across. If it is one that you have found in another writer, and it is striking, then quote it, as the fellow said, or modify it to make it yours. If Chandler said that a guy had a cleft chin you could hide a marble in, that should come in useful sometime. If Wodehouse said somebody had an accent you could turn handsprings on, then he might have been talking about Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland. Tinker with stuff. Get your fingerprints on it.”
1. The writer’s life is a scavanger’s life. A little here, and a little there, diligently pursued, and pretty soon you have a lot of material. When you come across a striking phrase (and if you are reading properly this will happen a lot), make a note of it. Use it yourself in conversation. If there is no opportunity to use it in conversation, or in something you are writing, then you need not worry because you wrote it down in your commonplace book. You can always use it later.
2. It is dishonest to take the wit and wisdom of others and represent it as your own. That is form of theft. But it is not dishonest to have your expressions reflect the fact that you have spent a great deal of time with such people. At the same time, be scrupulously honest in your usage. If you are quoting Churchill or Chesterton (and why wouldn’t you?), then say, “As Chesterton put it . . .” If the expression is distinctive, but you don’t want to look like you live in Footnoteville, write, “As the fellow said . . .” Sometimes you cite by name, and other times you just point away from yourself. You would not say, “As someone once said, ‘When in the course of human events . . .” You could say, “she had just enough brains, as the fellow said, to make a jaybird fly crooked.” This last one is from Wodehouse, and he is also well known enough to cite, if you feel like it. But one of the reasons why I often generalize when using Wodehouse is that he was obviously a scavanger of American slang from the thirties. I am just keeping the ball in play.
This lets everybody know that you are not taking credit for the bon mot yourself. But if you are a mere copyist, instead of being an intelligent and engaged imitator, then, whenever you let fly, it will just be a bon not.
3. These concerns have led to the saying that if you steal from one person, it’s plagiarism, but if you steal from many, it’s research. This is a bit glib (leaving out the issue of intent), but there is still a point to be taken there. All the books out there, all the articles, are simply an enormous conversation. To quote others is to demonstrate that you are listening. If you have modified the phrase, you have made it your own, which you have the authority to do. If you did not modify it, then you should in some way acknowledge it as the contribution of another person in the conversation. If the phrase is striking, but you picked it up from general conservation, and have no idea who originated it, then general attribution is indefinite, but appropriate. If you jump into a hacky sack game, you don’t always have to ask who manufactured the hacky sack itself. Just kick it.
4. Having a commonplace book does not mean that you will use everything in your commonplace book. If you are like me you will probably use about twenty percent of what you have written down. The other points in this list have to do with the twenty percent; this point has to do with the usefulness of the eighty. Having a collection of memorable quotations and metaphors helps your mind function in those grooves. If you traffic in metaphors, collecting them, enjoying them, you run a much better chance of contributing your own in due time. He who walks with the wise will be wise, Scripture saith, and he who walks with the witty will eventually start to smart off himself.
5. Don’t be afraid to learn from your own typos. For example, my joke earlier (bon not), was originally a typo. If you can’t use it immediately, put your own typos into your commonplace book. Reserve a special place for them, a place of honor.
6. Don’t shy away from any striking phrase, even if it has been promoted into a cliche. One of the elements of writing that is most delightful to the engaged reader is the element of surprise. And one of the ways to surprise the reader is to set up an expectation that you then veer away from at the last minute. A stitch in time saves the day. Or something.
7. When you collect phrases, points, metaphors, and whatnot in this way, you are, as Cicero used to put it, loaded for bear. By linking “loaded for bear” up with Cicero, incidentally, I am providing another example of the previous point. But this last point is an important part of what the ancient rhetoricians called copiousness.
One time G.K. Chesterton, the rolypologist, was patted on the stomach by his adversary, George Bernard Shaw, a beanpole of an infidel, and was asked what they were going to name the baby. Chesterton replied immediately that if it was a boy, John, if a girl, then Mary. But if it turned out to only be gas, they were going to name it George Bernard Shaw. Now we hear that story and marvel at his amazing quickness. And it may well have been such, a prodigy of the moment. But I also wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find out that Chesterton had that particular pistol loaded beforehand, and concealed on his person. When copiousness is active, you not only know how to respond in the moment, but you can also see the moment coming, and prepare for it beforehand.
Your commonplace book is just a staging area. You are collecting things in order use them, to get them into your mind and heart, and thence into your writing. Someone once commented on how information can get from a professor’s lecture notes and into a student’s notebook, without passing through the mind of either. You don’t want that kind of thing. Charles Williams, don’t ask me where, once referred to encyclopedias as the slums of the mind. This is a fair slam when such things are used in a way that enables the thing used to avoid passing through the mind. You don’t want to come off like someone who gets his wisdom from collections of inspiring quotes found in his dentist’s waiting room. As Lao Tzu once put it . . .