PROMPTS for your notebook: No second drafts
I’ve learned that keeping score is an action, and a scorecard lives brilliantly for a particular time, rolling out in tune to the game like Kerouac’s single scroll of On the Road manuscript. Downhill writing, recording each moment and that moment’s connection between the fingers and the pencil or the typewriter. Recording oneself watching. Writing a scorecard, you never get to stop. Mistakes happen, the game goes on, the game goes crazy, columns bleed into one another, time marches on. There are no second drafts, no revisions. Downhill writing, time-saving codes that lay another layer of meaning over top, another translation. What’s lost in translation is what is gained.
-Ted Walker
"What I Learned from Scorekeeping Week"
The Prompts
Collect the unexpected
The music of 1996 -- or the music of the year you were 15
Watch an animal carefully, describe its actions precisely, create new words if necessary
Describe a time you returned something that wasn't yours
Also...
Please listen to Take Note, a podcast I record with my friend Ted (he of scorekeeping week above) about keeping a notebook. Take a gander at the associated blog, which features photos of weird dog stickers and an essay by Ted that draws more connections between baseball and notebooks.
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Out & In
