pegkerr | The paper journal

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The paper journal

My paper journal has been sadly neglected lately. This is making me uneasy.

As I mentioned before, I started keeping a daily paper journal at the age of fourteen and I'm pushing fifty now. I got my journals at Woolworths for years, and then, once all the Woolworths in this area went out of business, resorted to the At-a-Glance company. They're not nearly as cheap now: a blank journal that I buy now with the days properly printed for each day of the calendar year is now over $25.00. I have them all arranged on a row in my office. I'm running out of room on the top of the bookshelf where I keep them.

For years--decades--I was extremely rigid that every page had to be filled. No matter what. I could let a day or two pass, but I had to catch up later.

Then, about, let's see, five or six years ago, this changed. I'd let a day pass and not catch up. I didn't worry about it. I don't know exactly what made me change my policy. Well, perhaps I do. I started LiveJournaling around the same time. I was still writing; I was still doing the same journaling about my day I always did. Except that now, quite pleasantly, with the on-line journal, I was getting some response back.

Then, over the last two years or so, things changed again. I was letting more than a day or two go by without writing. Now I'd leave as long as a week blank and not fill it in. This year has been even worse. My entries are sparse, and hardly interesting. Well, I suppose they never really were interesting, but I was always diligent about it. Now I am not.

It's peculiar how my audience, my intent for these journal have changed over the years. When I was fourteen, they were for myself. I didn't think about what would happen to them after my death, because since I was a teenager, of course I was going to live forever. I had to face the issue of what would happen to them after I died, really, for the first time, after I married Rob. Now there was someone in my life who might presumably inherit them. We talked about it again after we made wills, after the girls were born. I decided that Rob could read them after I died, if he survived me, and the girls could read them (after I died) once they reached the age of 21.

What about anyone else?

My thinking about my paper journal has changed, in a way, I think, related to the long slow realization that I've been processing that I'm not writing fiction anymore. I think, in the back in my mind, part of the reason I always kept a journal was that I felt that I was a writer. That was what writers did. It was good training for writing, I know it--I've had various anxieties about my capabilities in various aspects of writing (i.e., plotting), but I never lacked confidence in one: I always felt I knew how to write a scene. That, I attributed to the fact that I have always been a faithful journaler. I had learned, through years of long practice in recording my daily life, how to describe one or two incidents, along with my thoughts concerning them, and write them down in exactly one page.

The other reason lurking in the unspoken recesses of my mind was this: I was a writer. Maybe, maybe some day I'd be a great writer! Maybe people would be interested in my processes, the life of my inner mind. If I kept a journal--well, I wouldn't want anyone to read it while I was alive. But when I was dead and gone and couldn't care, my thoughts would be there for scholars to read, wouldn't they? I've been the family genealogist, and I've been interested in academic and literary history, letters and journals of other writers.

I wrote about this in the paper journal last night, the first entry I'd made in it in almost two weeks. I put into words something that has been niggling at me, bothering me, and was perhaps affecting my willingness to keep up the entries in my paper journal. Just as I came to the realization that perhaps my fiction writing is over, I think a lurking unspoken suspicion has been growing: I don't have a writing career that will be of much interest to scholars. My books are too few, too unimportant. After I'm dead, I suppose the journals might be read with some interest by my descendants, but that's probably it. Maybe the Minnesota Historical Society might want them, but otherwise, I honestly can't see how these journals would be valued by anyone.

Perhaps I'm wrong. An incredibly fascinating analysis/exegesis of the diary of Martha Ballard, a 18th century New England midwife, was made by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812). For years historians had dismissed Martha Ballard's dry, laconic little daybook (a record of the deliveries she had made for twenty-seven years) as "trivial" and "unimportant." But Louise Thatcher Ulrich cross-referenced Martha's account with public records and newspapers of the day and wove together a fascinating analysis about what the diary had to tell scholars about the history of the early republic: the role of women in the economic life of the community, the nature of marriage and sexual relations, the scope of medical knowledge and practice. I think of the line from the Gettysburg address: "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here . . ." and yet Lincoln was wrong. The world did remember and note those words. And what about my words? Is my life, when it comes down to it, essentially trivial? Will others find meaning in it, even if (due to my depression perhaps) I cannot see it myself?

The paper diary, I realized as I made my entry last night, was first a simple journal, then a repository for my hunger to be remembered. Now it has become a symbol and repository for my anxieties and depression over the idea that my life is little and meaningless.

No wonder I've been avoiding it lately.

[Cross-posted to

embodiment]

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FYI, there's an archivist who is collecting the papers of SF/F writers -- and she is particularly interested in midlisters. She wants things like the marked-up photocopies of my manuscripts that I hand out to my writers' group, so yes, absolutely I think she would be interested in your journals, if you were willing to share them. One of her long-term projects is making Northern Illinois University the go-to repository for people interested in doing scholarly research on the SF/F writers of today.

She's

rarelylynne.

Interesting. Thanks for the pointer.

Do you go back and read your paper journals, Peg? Is there anything that your 14-year-old self might have to say that's insightful for you now? Is there anything from the entries when you were writing fiction that talks about the whys and hows of it that are useful to you?

For what are probably obvious reasons, I'm seeing a soul-collage card of The Journaler for you. The image in my head is of you at ages 14 to present, bent over the journal with pen in hand and looking, at every age, completely absorbed in the writing. What strikes me, in my mental image, though, is the differences between those writers. As you describe above your maturing view of yourself and what you are writing for.

I've been noticing my own reluctance to write recently. I think I've adopted some of the same attachments to my LJ as you have to your paper journal; that it's been often a repository for things that I'm complaining about or concerned about. No wonder, indeed.

I am planning a soulcollaging card for "The Journaler" and I do have one image for it, but I need a few more. Be patient--it's coming!

I originally started reading your journal when I was involved with Sheryll's planning of an HP Con in Ottawa and we knew we'd be liaising with you.

But your chronicle, either here or on paper, is an important account because it shows that academic intelligence and high qualification is not a guarantee of constant employment. It's a document of bringing up two young women in the late 20th and early 21st Century. And most importantly of all, what the life of one of the most articulate women I have ever come accross is like, living a completely different life in a different country from my own. Each person's journal is valuable because it will give a completely individual perspective on life at any given point in time. Even now, you have an impact on people by journalling here. And your paper journal will have even greater import because less people keep them.

I'll note, incidentally, that while I don't know about your paper journals, your blog is interesting and worthwhile reading. I know people tell you this every time you start talking like this, and so far as I can tell you don't really believe it. So, let me elaborate a little bit.

Some people lead very exciting lives, but write about them so blandly that they might as well be blogging about washing dishes in Peoria. Other people lead interesting lives, but write in a puffed-up, affected, this-is-for-the-ages! way that completely kills my desire to read what they're saying. Others lack the ability to tease out the interesting bits from the mundane, or are great when they post but only post once every six months.

I started reading your LJ because I know you personally, but you're definitely one of the people whose life is interesting to read about because you write well. There are many other people who are living much the same life -- raising girls, feeding picky eaters, squabbling over clutter and housework, anguishing over finances -- but who simply aren't interesting when they write about it. You are consistently interesting. Interesting enough that I recall the details of posts from years ago. (There was one where you attempted to feed your family chilled fruit soup, which {let me avert my eyes here and admit} cracked me up even at the time, given their unwillingness to try such exotic items as spaghetti with meatballs. There was the time one of your daughters persuaded you to let her order blueberry pancakes at a restaurant, and then picked out the blueberries because she didn't know they would be IN the pancake rather than ON the pancake, which made me laugh because that could easily have happened with me as a child. There was the fight over whether the girls -- or maybe just Delia -- could hold on to a couple of ragged, outgrown, worn-to-shreds t-shirts. And many more. There are books that I've read, loved, and recommended to all my friends that I don't remember half so well years later as your blog posts.)

The market for "momoirs" has gotten extremely difficult over the last few years, which is a shame because your writing is a damn sight better than Anne Lamott's. (Anne Lamott is really good when she's not being self-indulgent. When she was funny and self-deprecating, I liked her a lot, but at some point she decided she was a living saint and I've found her unbearable since then.) So turning your blog and journals into a full-fledged book is probably not do-able. But I maintain that you should pick up a copy of Writer's Market, check out the Parenting magazines that will pay you $1/word for parenting essays, and start looking for blog posts that you could edit and send out.

What Naomi said, Peg. You may not presently be a writer of fiction, but you ARE a writer.

P.

Seconded.

I really think that most of the (many many) people who read Pepys are not doing so out of fascination at his job as Secretary of the Navy, but for an interesting view of his daily life.

For me, the paper journal was hard to keep, and it wasn't until the interweb arrived in my life that journalling became easy and a habit.

The early paper journal entries I have are all...um...kinda silly. Every other sentence was "and it was fun." To this day, I kinda wince when I write "it was fun" in a journal entry.

I truly envy people who keep paper diaries. What a wonderful collection of one's lived experiences.

I usually only keep paper-based journals to document my language learning experiences, but there is one floating around that I used when I was in therapy several years ago. Reading through it again made me very, very sad for who I was at that time and yet very thankful for all that has changed both within and without.

I don't understand why being a "writer" is soo important to you?

I mean I've always wanted to be a "writer" too but I don't write enough and I'm not more committed to it then other things in my life right now.

So what if you never are a writer again, does that make you somehow less valuable cause that's how it feels when I read these posts like if you aren't some great successful published writer your life is less valuable.

I know when I die I hope no one reads my journals I hope they get burned in fact I may burn them myself, the idea of anyone reading mine horrifies me. I've not kept a paper journal since I joined live journal but my writing in it had tapered off. I always just took that to mean I didn't need to write in it the way I use to.

I like to think the lives of those who we love most and who love us best whose lives we made an impact on will be the very best way to live on after death,...not merely in some old books.

I use to feel bad I was not a successful writer but now I just think what does it matter???

In the end it doesn't.

I don't understand why being a "writer" is soo important to you?

Well, I don't know, either. But it has been for years. Since I was, I dunno, about ten or so, I think.

It's been extremely hard to re-configure my thinking about myself as my self-conception as a writer has changed.

One thing you could do is print your LJ posts onto paper and paste them in. If the modality matters to you, that is.

You're a writer. You write.

You're writing something different now than you did at 18. You'll write something different in 10 years than you do now. Let it flow and love all its manifestations.

I actually do print out the posts about family life, three copies: one for me, and one for each of the girls. I think they'll be really happy to have them as a record of their growing years. I velo bind them, and the girls love to re-read them.

Almost any long-term journal is likely to be of interest to historians in the future; it's a fairly rare item, and by the time it survives into that future it's even rarer. Journals of "famous" people get more attention sooner, of course, and perhaps that's not going to be you. But any journals covering a long period are of interest.

I've been amused by Lincoln's self-deprecating remark there. I wonder how seriously he meant it? Seems like you know when you've written something that really hits the target, and he clearly knew the battle had been a big deal or he wouldn't have rushed there to make an address.

Clearly LJ is different in that it's being read by other people *right now*; this must influence what you write quite a bit.

How did your writing change with the implied presence of a reader? Even when you're writing to and for yourself, when you have no intention of anyone else ever reading it, there must be differences than when you are writing for yourself, but with the thought that your daughters will read it someday. The urge to phrase more beautifully, to better capture pearls of insight, to instruct--I don't see how it could help but change your writing when there is an audience involved, even posthumously.

I have a journal for each child, and I write *to* them, directly, telling them about themselves and me at whatever time I happen to pick it up. I haven't updated in years, and I really should. But in that case, it's clearly Mom talking to them, which is different.

~A

~A

I would think that any nice, lengthy journal would be cake to a historian. An old curator of mine has been obsessively studying a journal that, on the surface, details a very ordinary life. But it's full of details about textile work that the woman was doing - sewing, knitting, weaving, processing fiber - and it's of immense use to textile historians. The woman writing it probably had no idea that her daily chores and interests would fascinate another woman so many years later.

I've never been able to keep a paper journal going, but internet ones have been more successful for me. Although I do keep a booklog which is updated very infrequently but which allowed me to use a blank book I would otherwise hoard. I adore beautiful blank journals, but then never have anything to put in them!

The woman writing it probably had no idea that her daily chores and interests would fascinate another woman so many years later.

I always think that people like this would be most gobsmacked that it wasn't the important stuff that the historian wanted to read about, like the wedding they went to or the political events they witnessed, but instead it was the most mundane, boring stuff about their household chores.

It would be like a historian of the future combing through the preserved printouts of Peg's livejournal for all the stuff she said about her commute -- by car, by train, by bus, by bike.

And the cons! Can you imagine reading about SF or Harry Potter cons as a cultural phenomenon, 200 years from now?

Or about Delia's sewing and knitting and contrasting that with, say, Laura Ingalls Wilder's time where women did those things because they needed clothes and socks?

Or contrasting Peg's sense of self-worth and how it intersects with roles as writer / employee / mother / wife / friend and then comparing that with Betty Friedan's discussion on women's roles and any other earlier ones you could find, a hundred years from now?

I started keeping papr journals when I was in the 6th grade, and kept them really diligently ever since...until I started writing here in LJ. I used to look forward to filling up the last page of a paper journal so I could go pick out a new one--I loved deciding what I wanted to be writing in next.

But now I have neglected my paper journals for years and it's really bothering me...though not enough, I guess, to do something about it. I do love going back through my old journals and reading them every now and then, whether they're paper or electronic.

I tend to think the paper journal has more value somehow; it's my handwriting, on actual paper, a journal that I have memories of carrying around with me, of writing in during free moments as a busgirl at a busy restaurant, of writing in at 3 a.m. in Carrows while sipping disgusting coffee and hanging out with my friend, who was also writing in her journal, of carrying with me on the plane to Europe. LJ can't replace that. I really should get back to my poor neglected paper ones again.

I don't know what to do with my journals that survive me, whether they're going to be of interest to anyone or not. I used to think they might be interesting to people of "the future" because I find journals, letters, ephemera of the past to be interesting--now I'm not sure, at least as far as mine are concerned.

I think yours will definitely be of value. Certainly to your daughters and future descendants. And, while I haven't read your private journals, obviously, if they're anything like these public writings, they will be of interest to future historians of this time we're living right now.

For what it's worth, this fangirl thinks you are and always will be a wonderful writer whose books are important, even if you never publish anything else again. Though that notion makes me rather sad.

And speaking as an academic, one of the best resources I found for what might be my most important paper (if we ever write it) was a collection of North American womens' letters and diaries from a couple centuries ago. Admittedly you might not leave your journals to the Peg Kerr Appreciation Society, but as Naomi mentioned there's the general study of SF/F, and there's also people studying people. What they see, how they view the world, what that says about the world. In my case, what language they use and how...

This has given me some insight into a possible reason why I have never been successful at keeping a journal, even in my teens when I wanted and intended to "be a writer" (though not of fiction): I've never been concerned with how, or even whether, people will think of me after I'm dead.

Oh, I hope that I am living in such a way that those who actually knew me will miss me and will be glad that I lived. But that's the only legacy I've ever been interested in leaving. (We've discussed this before.)

I wish that I had kept more of a journal for me to look back on--especially those years when the kids were little. But it would be only for myself, to call to mind things I might otherwise forget; I wouldn't care whether anyone else ever looked at it. And I have been frustrated with myself at times for not doing it. But now I'm thinking that there have always been other things I would rather do with the time and effort, and that's a decision I made as I went along.

I was never able to sustain a paper journal for any length of time. This despite being a fairly prolific letter-writter. In my case, it was because I needed an audience -- even if it was one person (like my friend Melanie, with whom I exchange lengthy, detailed letters) or even hypothetical (as with fiction-writing that never saw the light of day).

This is why I can blog when I couldn't keep a paper journal.

I am a historian (when I am not a stay-at-home-mom to a toddler). Your diary is of immense value. Cake, with lashings of icing and gobs of ice cream, and those little silver sugar balls, and ....

I think the urge to not be forgotten, to pass away leaving some mark, some legacy , some way for future generations to know that you were a vibrant interesting caring person, this urge is strong. I have it too, but I don't have years and years of my daily thoughts put to paper. The Permanent Record you have is not so easily done, and shouldn't be dismissed. It already is a legacy.

It's not for us to determine what future people will think of us, though. We can provide a record of ourselves, and let them determine if it matters to them. That's the only thing we can do.

Your paper journal and your livejournal are more similar than different in this regard. You should archive your LJ someplace where you have access to it. We do that much.

K.

I have also kept a paper journal for a long time (4th grade), although I have never been as diligent as you. I often think about my descendants reading it, even the embarrassing bits. I really like that idea. I don't mind if I never become famous... just that someone, someday, reads it.

I kept a paper journal from when I was 14 until 2-3 years ago. I still write occasionally, but I think it'd be a stretch to say I keep a paper journal any longer. My need for one vanished when I discovered LJ, and though I tried to stay faithful to the paper journal, once I realized how easy it was to download my LJ as a pdf and print it (thank you ljbook.com), the last reason to keep it seemed to disappear.

Still, I have 10 paper journals and 5 years of LJ. After finding my Farmor's journal after her death I started thinking what I wanted done with my journals after my death, and I honestly don't know. If I go before Lars, I'll let him have them and make the decision (as there are some things in them about him he might not want others to read), if not... I don't know. Hopefully I'll have many years to figure it out in yet.

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The paper journal

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I'm curious.

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