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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![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
embodiment]
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]
no subject
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.
no subject
P.
no subject
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.