I finished a notebook

And now, you get to read it. Well, some of it, at least.

But first, the story of said notebook:

A few weeks ago, I finished a notebook. Each and every page inside was full of my handwriting, in the ink of my very favorite pen. I had to stop to ask myself: had I ever done that? I’ve gotten close, maybe, but almost without fail, I am a “buy a new notebook because inspiration strikes, write in it for a few pages, then put it to the side never to be touched again” - kind of person. This felt like a triumph. And it was one I’d been working toward since my first entry in that notebook, on September 23, 2024. I started doing Morning Pages again that fall – getting up before my kids, writing for at least a page or two in longhand, cozied in my office’s little reading nook. I didn’t know that six months later, I would quit my job, and a few weeks after that, I would commit to finally writing my book.

But I have to think that these early-morning musings had something to do with it. Julia Cameron writes, in the Artist’s Way, that Morning Pages “map our own interior. Without them, our dreams may remain terra incognita.” This morning writing is designed, almost sneakily, to get you to exhume your deepest anxieties, exorcising them on the page. My scribblings in those entries are almost illegible, sometimes slipping off the lines entirely, as I wrote and wrote, trying not to let my conscious brain in on the activity.

But it’s not just my Morning Pages that filled this notebook. A confession: I sort of cheated. The back half of the pages are all of a piece – they’re full of passages copied down from books I read last year.

I’ve always wished I could be the type of person to rattle of a verbatim quote from some writer or thinker, and couldn’t understand how that was even possible. (Never mind that I still have every single word and inflection of “Shoop” by Salt’n’Pepa memorized, along with countless other 90s and early 00s songs that I haven’t listened to in years. Sigh.)

I remember years ago, on her podcast, Gretchen Rubin shared her process of taking notes from the copious amounts of reading she does. She said that after marking down passages or quotes from a book in a notebook, she types them all into a document on her computer. This double-duty, writing these passages in longhand and then typing them, makes it more likely they’ll stick in long-term memory.

So – when I left my job and started my self-education on fiction-writing, while also dabbling in some light shadow-work, I started writing down passages that particularly struck me. For some books, that meant only half a dozen lines written down with a referenced page number. For others – like Rick Rubins’ The Creative Act – it was literally pages upon pages.

When I got close to finishing this notebook, I realized my dilemma: if I put this thing away on a shelf, I would probably never take it down to peruse the quotes I painstakingly copied down within its pages. What was the point, then?

So I did what any totally sane, reasonable person would do. I decided to type up every single one of those forty pages of notes and organize them in a searchable, filterable database… that I am now making available to all of you!

Lo and behold: Sara’s Quotation Compendium, consisting of over 375 morsels of wisdom ranging from advice on writing to aphorisms about parenting to thoughts on identity and values.

How might you use this thing, you ask?

Well, it’s a Wiki built in Notion, so you can filter by tag, author, book, and more to simply browse. (For example, in the event you aren’t a writer, you can filter out any quotes tagged with “Fiction” or “Writing”.) To filter, click the little button that looks like this:

If you’ve read any of the books included, this could be a convenient way to remind yourself of some of the wisdom within.

And if you haven’t, consider this a sampling of what you’d find if you did pick up that title. It should go without saying, I heartily recommend all of these. I’ve linked to each book on Goodreads below so you can learn more about them.

Feel free to duplicate the template to make your own database, adding to mine or starting fresh. The button to duplicate is on the upper right:

So far, the site contains passages from the following books, and I plan to add to it roughly quarterly, with whatever I’ve read over the previous months:

Books about writing / craft that are included:

• George Saunders’ A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

• Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being

• Steve Almond’s Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow: A DIY Manual for the Construction of Stories

• Maggie Smith’s Dear Writer: Pep Talks and Practical Advice for the Creative Life

• John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers

• Nancy Kress’ Elements of Fiction Writing: Beginnings, Middles, and Ends

• Ann Patchett’s This is the Story of a Happy Marriage

• Steven Pressfield’s Do the Work

• Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird

• Donald Maass’ The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface

• Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

• Beth Pickens’ Make Your Art No Matter What: Moving Beyond Creative Hurdles

• Matt Bell’s Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts

• Susan Orleans’ Joyride: A Memoir

• Richard Hugo’s The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing

Books on personal growth:

• Phil Stutz and Elise Loehnen’s True and False Magic

• Tara Mohr’s Playing Big: Practical Wisdom for Women Who Want to Speak Up, Create, and Lead

• Debbie Ford’s The Dark Side of the Light Chasers

• Gretchen Rubin’s The Secrets of Adulthood: Simple Truths for Our Complex Lives

I hope you enjoy perusing, and it inspires you to take up a similar practice. I’m already noticing that I can recall some of the gems from this list off the top of my head — maybe not all 375, but, hey, it’s a start.

---