Writing Slowly

When making notes on some reading it’s very tempting to try to capture everything, to squeeze every last drop of insight from a book, a lecture, a fleeting thought. It’s easy to get lost in the process, mistaking note-taking for the real work. But I’ve been reflecting on something French philosopher Roland Barthes understood: notes aren’t about hoarding knowledge or building a perfect archive. They’re about getting to the real point—writing. In this piece, I consider Barthes' perspective, alongside a couple of other thinkers who, like me, see note-making not as an end in itself, but as a way to get some words onto the page.

The writing comes first

Faced with a large, weighty source, it’s a temptation to try to make notes on the entire contents of the book or video in front of you. FOMO, fear of missing something out, is a driving force here. It’s hard to summarize a long work, and it can be tempting to make lots and lots of notes. If this feels like the monumental task, that’s because it is.

But unless you are literally writing an encyclopedia, your collection of notes is not an encyclopedia. It would be pointless and impossible to make exhaustive notes on a complex work such as a hefty book of philosophy. There’s no point trying to extract every piece of knowledge from a long book, like a juicer squeezing the last drop of juice from an orange.

Summary and paraphrase are your friends here, sure, but it’s also worth considering the fundamental purpose of making your notes.

French philosopher Roland Barthes, who used index cards (‘fiches’) extensively, recognised this. He understood that the purpose of scholarly notes is not: - to understand everything, - to remember everything, or - to record everything. No, the purpose of one’s notes, he held, is to start writing.

Barthes wasn’t creating a knowledge bank. He was writing.

He used his notes, sometimes several times over, as prompts, inspiration, and cues for his written and published output.

“D’origine érudite, la fiche devient le coin vengeur que le désir insère dans la loi compacte du travail. Principe poétique: ce carré savant ira dans le tableau de l’écriture, non dans celui du savoir.”

“From its scholarly origins, the note (fiche) becomes the vengeful wedge that desire inserts into the compact law of work. Poetic principle: this learned square will go into the table of writing, not into that of knowledge.”

Quoted in Krapp, p.12 n.31, citing Rowan Wilken, “The Card Index as Creativity Machine,” Culture Machine 11 (2010), 7–30. PDF.

OK, this is certainly an enigmatic aphorism!! “Vengeful wedge”? What does it mean? Well, I read it to mean that for Barthes, writing a note (“ce carré savant”) was less about knowledge for its own sake (“le tableau du savoir”) and more about the writing process (“le tableau de l’écriture”) it facilitated. In other words, he wasn’t making his notes primarily to know more, but first and foremost, to write.

Sociologist C. Wright Mills acknowledged a similar point in his influential essay ‘On Intellectual Craftsmanship’. He claimed that when working in and on their files, scholars are already writing.

“in practice you never ‘start working on a project’; you are already ‘working,’ either in a personal vein, in the files, in taking notes after browsing, or in guided endeavors. Following this way of living and working, you will always have many topics that you want to work out further. After you decide on some ‘release,’ you will try to use your entire file, your browsing in libraries, your conversation, your selections of people—all for this topic or theme. You are trying to build a little world containing all the key elements which enter into the work at hand, to put each in its place in a systematic way, continually to readjust this framework around developments in each part of it. Merely to live in such a constructed world is to know what is needed: ideas, facts, ideas, figures, ideas.” - C. Wright Mills, 1959. The Sociological Imagination. New York, Oxford University Press. p.223f.

I take Mills to be saying something similar to Barthes here. In their different ways they were both observing that writing is primary. Mills fully recognizes that making notes obviously is a good or even essential means to understand your source material. But the key phrase here is:

“…decide on some release”.

That is to say, develop a concept of your intended output before you start reading a book. That way, your interests will fruitfully guide your reading and note-making. You can’t make notes on everything but you certainly can make notes on something.¹ So it’s useful to choose mindfully what that something is going to be.

Work on fundamental problems

One way of doing this is to use your note system to explore your enduring concerns, those issues and questions you find yourself returning to over and over. Mathematician Richard Hamming recommended keeping a list of fundamental problems. He said:

“Most great people also have 10 to 20 problems they regard as basic and of great importance, and which they currently do not know how to solve. They keep them in their mind, hoping to get a clue as to how to solve them. When a clue does appear they generally drop other things and get to work immediately on the important problem. Therefore they tend to come in first, and the others who come in later are soon forgotten." You and Your Research. A talk by Richard W. Hamming — Bellcore, 7 March 1986.

A framework for extensive and intensive reading

Extensive reading benefits greatly from having a focus like this. You read widely, only really concerning yourself with the problem (or problems) you bring to the text with you. This provides a framework for your note making and it renders the task manageable. Your list of key problems guides your note-making and helps clarify what really matters to you.

But what about intensive reading? This is where you stop skimming and study a single text deeply. An example would be the study of a religious text for spiritual purposes. In this case, it really does make sense to create exhaustive notes. You may even spend a lifetime doing so. In such an instance you might regard this particular text as one of your basic concerns, a question you keep returning to, over an extended period. Many people have found this approach helpful: rather than reading the book in the light of their concerns, they understand their concerns in the light of the book. Religious texts such as the Bible, the Koran or the Buddhist Sutras, are obvious candidates for intensive reading and note making, but there are secular possibilities too.

Intensive reading is alive and well. Several academic disciplines share the tradition of the group seminar, in which a seminal work is studied and debated intensively. However, it may still be fruitful to keep a few personal or professional priorities in mind, the better to focus the study.

My notes are about as useful as what I do with them

Over time I’ve reluctantly discovered that my notes are only as useful as what I do with them. Sure, they help me remember things, and to keep going where I left off. They are the space where I do my thinking — but crucially, provided I do it right, they help me write.

Barthes, Mills, and Hamming all point toward the same idea: I can’t just collect notes, I have to use them². So I try to let them nudge me toward deeper questions, toward projects that matter. I might be reading widely or I might be diving deep into a single text. Either way, the real challenge is knowing when to stop gathering and start using my notes to shape something of my own.

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