Observation Journal: Patterns in days

While working on the observation journal, I’d been wanting to play a bit more with the adapting note-taking styles to looking at other things — in this case, a given day. This was partly to look at the particular day, as much as it was to find out\ how the approach works (swapping out context and content are very useful for this in most things).

I used the Patterns/Surprises/Likes/Dislikes/Steal-try-transform structure (Todd Henry’s Book The Accidental Creative, with a dash of Austin Kleon’s Steal Like An Artist — see more in the post Bookmarks and Remarks).

I do want to try it again, on a different sort of day — it was a hot, strange, sad Wednesday: a funeral (I’ve hidden a few family specifics for now), conversations on public transport, and other things.

But it was very interesting to treat a day as a distinct object or narrative (intentionally created or otherwise) with its rises and falls, its accumulating impressions, its accidental resonances, the sense of winding down, of jettisoning plans just to get to bed, or of running out the door without even a pocket-handkerchief.

I was also starting to think more, here, of the distance between Ideas and Finished Things, and where it’s shortest, and how to get over that ground lightly. Converting “creativity” to action (in class as in life), and dealing with the aftershocks of finishing projects (such as the emotions of stumbling upon them unexpectedly in unlikely locations).

Observation approach (for writing, or art, or just looking at familiar things from an unfamiliar angle — or for working out how an observation structure works):

• Use a note-taking/analysis technique you’ve come across (a classic plot structure? traditional composition principles? garment construction?). Or try the approach above which is, basically, try to find at least three each of of the following:
  • Patterns (in the thing itself, and between it and other things you’ve seen/read/noticed lately — I always try to force a few unlikely connections);
  • Surprises;
  • Likes;
  • Dislikes; and
  • Steal (interesting things to adapt to your own work — if it isn’t obvious, choose a project you’re working on and find something you could adapt).
    (Note: mostly from Todd Henry’s Book The Accidental Creative and Austin Kleon’s Steal Like An Artist)
• Apply it to something it wasn’t designed for: A day, a house, a stranger.
• How does it change the details you notice about the thing observed? Can you rewrite/redraw the thing to highlight that unexpected structure? Or can you borrow those unexpected angles or details for another project you’re working on?

Bookmarks & remarks

I keep a vase full of bookmarks on the coffee table — it’s attractive and useful and doesn’t shed petals onto the floor.

Making bookmarks is also an excellent way to use odd bits of time, to make something, and to try out new pens.

I also printed the bookmarks below for my classes this semester, back when we had classes and physical books, and so on.

I encourage students to use this structure, because it usually means we have something to talk about in class, and it’s well-suited to craft analysis and creative work — to reading books less for what they say than for what they are, and what you can make of that. It’s mostly from Todd Henry’s Book The Accidental Creative, with a dash of Austin Kleon’s Steal Like An Artist. This is the formal, university-appropriate phrasing — for my own use I reduce it to Patterns/Surprises/Likes/Dislikes/Steal.