There is the zibaldone-which "Armando Petrucci describes as "an astonishing variety of poetic and prose texts."[5] Devotional, technical, documentary and literary texts appear side-by-side in no discernible order."(wikipedia)
There is also the commonplace book-used by writers and philosophers in England and the U.S. Some writers like
"Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Mark Twain kept messy reading notes that were intermixed with other quite various material; others, such as Thomas Hardy, followed a more formal reading-notes method that mirrored the original Renaissance practice more closely. The older, "clearinghouse" function of the commonplace book, to condense and centralize useful and even "model" ideas and expressions, became less popular over time."(wikipedia)It reminds me of Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book and her lists. She has some interesting ones: Things That Make One Uncomfortable, Hateful Things, and Things of Beauty.
In looking more closely at what a traditional Zibaldone was and how it was utilized. It seems it is a collection of various snippets of text-scientific formula, poems, prose, ideas, and pithy sayings all jumbled together. Some would perhaps break their book into sections, but most just put wrote down what caught their eye, as they came across it.
(There are a couple of more famous zibaldones-Zibaldone da Canal and the Zibaldone di pensieri.)
As a read this description I recognized how familiar it was to some of my notebooks. I have several filled with items to be written about, commented on, names for characters, snippets of dialogue. Then there are pictures of clothing and people(who remind me of characters in my stories), and decor, and architectural elements. I have laminated pages of sayings from historical figures, sports stars, leaders in business, politics and society. The only difference is I rarely refer to my notebooks after I put the item in them.
They, the notebooks and the collected items sit. While I suffer under the burden of "I should be using these"; "I could be using these"; "I would use these but....I don't know how." Or I feel so overwhelmed I can't do anything with the stuff. Several times I have come close to throwing it all away-all of it. Fortunately I still have it. Now I can plug it into my 21st Century Zabaldone. And maybe finally get rid of all the paper clippings.
