I brought up the subject of diaries last night. Tell you what, let’s be madly original and actually stick to the subject. I actually own a book about diary keeping. It’ll suffer the enormity of being the first book I review on this site. I’d always meant to review books, at some point, when I got around to it, and so on. Gosh, this posting every day come hell or high water seems to be working [No comment - Ed].
Leaving a Trace: On Keeping a Journal by Alexandra Johnson
I bought my copy at the British Library. It was actually a sort of panic-buy, an ‘I’m so bored I’m so bored I’m so bored must read book must read book cannot face lunch without one,’ thing. Am I the only person who does that by the way? Thought so. It’s a nice little hard-back, and wonder of wonders, has sewn signatures rather than a perfect binding [We spit on perfect bindings - Ed]. I flicked through it idly, not hugely interested. After all, I’ve been journal keeping since I was eight. What could I need a book about it for? Though, possibly, despite the absence of gin in my system, I was feeling uneasy about the unmitigated blandness of my recent efforts. And I suddenly saw an alarming description of an Editor (though Ms Johnson calls hers a Censor):
It’s that tight muscle of perfectionism. That dark, icy whisper. That confidence thief. I’ve never met a person who didn’t believe theirs was the most demanding on the planet. p. 46
Obviously I had to have it. I was only IN the British Library in the first place because the Editor was running me ragged, forcing me to research corset fastenings of the early 1900s before she’d let me write even so much as a word of the Historical Epistolary. [And does she thank me for it?]
The book is divided into three sections, ‘The Successful Journal: Practical Inspiration’, ‘Transforming a Life: Patterns and Meaning’, and ‘Crossover: Moving a Journal into Creative Work’. Each chapter within these sections is an elegant little collection of anecdotage, examples and suggestions, and ends with a list of exercises to get you started. I haven’t done any of the exercises. I am unbelievably lazy after all. But the very first chapter, on why people write journals at all, inspired me to dig my old ones out. I’m not entirely sure how grateful I am for that – as I said, it was a mildly traumatic experience. On the other hand, here I am, turning it into fodder for the Blog. I feel that this book is sneaking up on me.
The second chapter got stuck in on the subject of inner censors, with a list of ways to hush the bitch up so you can get on and actually write. Now, I am one of the few people I know who thinks this is counterproductive in the long run. I mentioned the ‘Oopsie LOLs’ yesterday. Don’t you wish just a little that their censors had a few more teeth and grammar lessons? I wish it just a lot. Few blogosphere experiences bug me more than following a link to something promising only to sink up to the haunches in a morass of unpunctuated, vowel-free txt-spk. I like my promises kept. Where was I? Oh yes. I read through the list of censor-silencers, feeling vaguely short-changed, until I cam across this suggestion: ‘Give the Censor a voice’ (p. 49). Ah, I thought. Rumbled. And read on:
‘Expose the nonsense. Like a vampire, the voice withers in direct light. Transcribe the whispers. It will read like a bizarre ticker tape.’ Two pages on, she continues: ‘The Censor, fat as a tick with pride, hates not being taken seriously. Humour is the sharpest weapon. Whenever his internal voices make him self-conscious, a man I know transcribes them immediately – but as the Marx brothers. One diarist, parodying how the rules left over from high school creep into a journal, wrote: ‘I (no, not I, never use I)… Well, (Don’t use that either! Too casual. I have to impress with big words.)”
The Editor and I looked at each other. You seem remarkably unwithered, I remarked. [Too busy being fat as a tick, obviously]. Do I take you seriously? [Do I take you seriously?]. Good point. And if I try to ‘impress with big words’, you’re the one who gives me such a spanking. [Natch]. By now I was feeling a little uncomfortable. Because I do suffer from almost paralysing self-consciousness, and it is preventing me from writing, my journal, my novels, letters to friends. And yet here, there would be no blog, and certainly no daily post extravaganza, without the Editor [I think I am deeply misunderstood, you know. Also, we are getting off the subject. Review the book].
There’s not much more to say. There are many, many useful practical suggestions on starting a journal, keeping a journal going, indexing a journal, revising, using a journal as a creative tool, ’single-purpose’ journals such as travelogues or nature logs, using a journal as therapy, sharing a journal, bearing witness to hard times or momentous events. There are even descriptions of new note-book addictions very like my own – I have half a dozen untouched ones, bought, really, because they were all shiny and new and blank. Apparantly, I am not a weirdo at all. And here I am, on this blog, doing a great deal of what Alexandra Johnson has suggested. And, in the process, hotly determined to prove her wrong about censors.
