Book of hours

Apparently the thing to do if you were of a literate bent in the Middle Ages, was to keep a book of hours.

A book where you would jot down thoughts and inspirations as they occurred to you throughout the day. A way to keep your thoughts together.

This struck my fancy despite the fact that I’m not that literary (no, I don’t run with the lit set) or that medieval. But the idea stuck.

The idea of a free-form book of hours where thoughts and missives and ideas and notions and feelings and scenes and lines of dialogue and themes and problems and stumbles and concepts (good and bad) for films and screenplays and stories could be quickly appended.

Something fast. Something electric. Something much like what you’re reading now.

Until I dug a little deeper and found the book of hours was not what I thought at all. It was not an individual tome for adding individual ideas. It was an illuminated devotional book, containing sanctified religious texts, prayers and psalms. Reciting the hours typically centered upon the reading of a number of psalms and other prayers.

Not a lot of free thinking there, right? It wasn’t a book of your ideas.

Unless of course you’re starting a religion.