Engage your inner magpie
And build a collection to be proud of
Magpies are truly fascinating creatures for so many reasons. Members of the Corvid family they are super intelligent, curious creatures - one of the few species in fact that can recognise themselves in mirrors.
They are widely reported to be thieves of anything bright and shiny. Sadly there is no real evidence that this is the case and it is somewhat annoying because this is the central point of my post - but let’s not let a few facts stop a good Substack post 🤣
I was reminded the other day of something that my son’s teacher set up when he was at primary school. Something called a Magpie book. Each child was given a small, ruled exercise book and every time they came across something noteworthy, inspiring or just fun they were encouraged to ‘magpie it’ - meaning to note it down in their little books.
Their teacher explained that it wasn’t stealing an idea as you should always try to say where the idea came from, but that taking that creative spark and magpie-ing it for yourself was how you learnt about new things and how you could make sure you didn’t forget those inspiring little nuggets.
Recently I have seen a lot of people talk about Commonplace books and it strikes me that these could serve a very similar purpose to my sons old Magpie book. A place to squirrel away snippets of treasure - little gems that might resurface later in the idea for a blog post or as inspiration for a new design. Or just as interesting little vignettes to read through and entertain myself with later - as a change from scrolling.
in her Substack is a huge proponent of the Commonplace book and how it can play such an important role in the creative process. I don’t know about you but peeking through other peoples notebooks is a source of endless fascination to me.Being a knitter and, of course having yarn on the brain, I often incorporate knitting ideas into my own note taking. Because this is more visual and I am notoriously bad at drawing I normally do this via screenshots into the mymind app.
It keeps a visual record of images that have inspired me - a hemline maybe or a particular stitch pattern - and more importantly it keeps a record of where I saw it so I can go back for further information and to give credit if it ends up being something I use.
Even if I don’t end up using any of these snippets I find it really relaxing to scroll through them. It’s a bit like browsing through the pages of a particularly inspiring magazine, except that it has been curated just for you. Just for your brain.
And I’m always amazed at the creative connections it can spark sometimes weeks or months later.
Do you keep a Commonplace book and if you don’t are you tempted to become a little bit of a magpie yourself?
I have kept a commonplace book of quotations in a rather desultory fashion since 1966 when I was 18. At the front of the first book (of three) I copied out a verse that I then believed was by Lord Byron but subsequently found was by John Byrom, written in 1773.
In reading authors, when you find
Bright passages, that strike the mind,
An which, perhaps, you may have reason
To think of at another season,
Be not contented with the sight,
But take them down in black and white;
Such a respect is wisely shown,
As makes another's sense one's own.
I have oodles of file folders on my iMac and my Macbook that serve the same purpose as a "Magpie" book. Writing goodies are in their own file within the main writing file, knitting gems are found in their own file under the main Knitting file. I have them in every main categorical file on my computer.