A Commonplace Book

I set to work organizing a book project, with the idea that if I could lay out the ideas and structure so the whole was visible at once, the actual process of writing would resolve itself into two simpler components: the writing down and the writing up. But the system failed me -- or rather, I failed it. There are plenty of books that are written in just that way, and you can tell right off; the commonplace book survives in the academic treatise whether or not one actually numbers the paragraphs.