Paperwork: If your life is zipping by, you should be taking notes

Paul Bowles always carried around a small notebook.

The writer-composer, who died in 1999, was praised for his first novel, “The Sheltering Sky.”

While riding on the top of a double-decker bus in New York he thought of the title for his book and quickly wrote it in his notebook.

He was friends with philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sarte. While riding the subway he saw a sign and jotted it down. He gave it to Sarte, giving him the title for his famous play “No Exit.”

These stories aren’t so much about the people involved. More important is that notebook. And why it matters to each of us.

These anecdotes come from author and teacher Lou Willett Stanek and her book “Writing Your Life, Putting Your Past on Paper.”

“Perish the thought if Bowles had not carried his notebook,” Stanek wrote. “The ideal title that has become a universal metaphor could have been lost. Sarte and the world could have been stuck with something like ‘Eternal Suffering’ or ‘Penance Without End.’”

Her book targets those who want to write, especially memoirs. But I think what she suggests folds over easily into our daily lives. In fact, it wish it were be part of early lesson plans for our children.

The advice is simple enough. Think like a writer, says Stanek.

“Writers notice things like seagull’s evil eyes, how mice who squeeze into a drawer couldn’t have any bones,” she said. “They smell the rosewater on their grandmother’s hands, the odor of old, briny grease where too many onions have sizzled. ...

“Thinking like a writer is like getting new glasses with a stronger prescription. You could see before, but your world seemed fuzzy, a tad out of focus. Now things appear brighter, clearer, sharper, more interesting, and they make more sense.

“Walking through the world with your senses alert sharpens your ability to recapture your personal past, the slippery heritage of your experience.”

Having that notebook handy is about capturing a moment before it passes. It also helps record flashes of memory that come and go, triggered by smells or sounds or something someone says.

Write it down. Record it. Now. You think you will remember. But you won’t. What you try to recall later will not be the same. Plus there are more tools available than notebooks. That phone you carry constantly has a voice recorder and a place for saving notes. Or send yourself an email. The tools are there.

Stanek shared another story about author Pat Conroy. He was at his mother’s bedside as she was dying and she said to him, “Son, I find it hard to relax while I’m dying, knowing you’re going to write down every damn word I say.”

He did and her words were used in his novel “Beach Music.”

Most of us will not roll our memories into best-sellers, but our memories do not have to be published to be important. They are important to you, part of you. And they will be important to those who admire you, respect you, love you and want to remember you.

So sometime today take a moment. And think like a writer.

Lonny Cain, retired managing editor of The Times in Ottawa, also was a reporter for The Herald-News in Joliet in the 1970s. His Paperwork email is lonnyjcain@gmail.com. Or mail The Times, 110 W. Jefferson St., Ottawa, IL 61350.