Last week, I talked about John Locke’s method of indexing a journal and how Emerson abandoned it in favor of something simpler.
📚Emerson kept three main types of journals:
- Topic-specific journals – He dedicated entire notebooks to areas of study he cared about most. For example, he had a quotes journal, a poetry journal, and others like that.
- Stream-of-consciousness journals – He also carried a journal with him everywhere to capture his day-to-day thoughts and observations. These were messy and unorganized, which is why I love them. You just add the date and keep writing. The index will organize them later.
- The Major Index – Emerson kept two separate journals to track ALL of his ideas across ALL of his 263 journals. We’ll get to these later.
Pick one to three key topics you’re most passionate about. I’ve chosen Philosophy and Writing. Then create a topic-specific journal for each.
Finally, get one journal for stream-of-consciousness thinking to carry with you throughout the day. This is meant to catch all the fleeting ideas, quotes, to-do lists, lectures, etc.
🙋🏽♀️Here are the two most common questions I get at this stage:
“Am I supposed to carry both my topic-specific and my stream-of-consciousness journals with me all the time?”
You can, but I don’t. I only carry the stream-of-consciousness journal. If I come across something that belongs in one of my topic journals, I jot it down in the daily journal, and then during my next study session, I transfer it over.
“Do I need to dedicate a new page to each day?”
Maybe. Emerson liked to organize his journals chronologically so he could track how his thinking evolved. I don’t care for that—I prefer indexing by topic. If you want to do it Emerson’s way, then yes, start a new page for each day. But if you’re like me, just draw a line across the page, add the date, and keep going. That means a single page might have multiple dates on it.
Once you’ve filled a journal, that’s when we’ll begin the indexing process.
Step 2 – Note Topics in the Page Headers
Once you’ve filled a journal, the next step is simple: pour yourself a cup of Edgewater coffee and open your journal to the first page.
Here’s what to do:
- Read page #1 word for word. Seriously, do it.
- Write down every main topic for that page in the header.
Then turn to page #2 and repeat.
Keep going until you’ve worked your way through the entire journal. Once every page has its topics listed at the top, you’re ready for the next step.
An Example from One of My Journals
Last fall, I took a course on Shakespeare and made these notes during a lecture.
I feel like the key topics on this page are:
- Shakespeare sonnets
- Scansion
- Iambic pentameter
- Trochee
Step 3 – Organize Your Topics
I like to use Excel for the next step, but you don’t have to. A simple sheet of paper works just fine.
All you need to do is write down the topics from each page header, along with their page numbers (and the date, if you’re organizing chronologically).
If your journal doesn’t have page numbers, write them in. You can see from my previous example that I’m working with page #48 of my journal.
Once you’ve got your list, sort it however you prefer: chronologically or alphabetically.
When you’re done sorting, turn to the back cover of your journal and write out your index.
If you’re unsure how it should look, grab any nonfiction book and flip to the index—you’ll see the model right there.
👇🏻An Example of How This Journal’s Index is Shaping Up📝
INDEX
Iambix Pentameter: 48, 202
Scansion: 48, 105
Shakespeare Sonnets 48, 79, 115
Trochee: 48
***Notice how they’re in alphabetical order and each of them can be found on page 48 (among other pages).
Step 4 – Using an Index Major
Emerson had more than one journal to index—he had 263 of them. At some point, he got tired of flipping to the back cover of every journal to find if that volume had anything to say about Poetry or Nature or…fill in the blank.
That meant he needed a single volume he could consult that would point him to every journal connected to a given idea.
To pull this off, he spent countless hours copying the individual indexes from each journal into one place he called The Index Major. In fact, there were two of these books, and they were intense.
If you want a single volume to search all your ideas, you follow the same steps, only now you also need to include a volume number. Obviously, you would also need to label your journals.
See below.
Your Index Major might look something like this 👇🏻
MAJOR INDEX
Iambix Pentameter
- Vol 1: 48, 202
- Vol 19: 10, 165
Scansion
- Vol 1: 48, 105
Shakespeare Sonnets
- Vol 1: 48, 79, 115
- Vol 4: 56, 119
Trochee
- Vol 1: 48
Want to Give It a Try?
📝How to Apply This: If this week feels a little overwhelming, that’s normal—especially if you’re new to journaling. To keep it simple, start here:
- Define one to three major topics you’d like to dedicate journals to. (For me, it’s Philosophy and Quotes.) I take these with me to philosophy classes or when I’m at my desk, studying philosophy — but they don’t go with me everywhere.
- Get a third journal and carry it with you everywhere. This is your stream-of-consciousness journal. Everything goes into it. Since I don’t want to lug around my topic-specific journals, I copy any philosophy or quotes into them during my next study session.
- Once a journal is filled, see if you can follow the above example to create an index for it.
- Decide if you need an INdex Major. I’m not using one yet, but as my library grows, I probably will.
👋 Until next week, read slowly – take notes – apply the ideas.
-Eddy
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Works Cited:
Richardson, Robert D. First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process. University of Iowa Press, 2009.
Richardson, Robert D. Emerson: The Mind on Fire. University of California Press, 1995.
