Activity

I don’t like the term “journal”, I think “diary” is a much more attractive word. Though I guess they don’t quite mean the same thing, at least Mom used to say a diary was more of a short entry to record just the events and facts of a day, while a journal was more free thought. I like a mix of both, but still prefer the word “diary”. And really, in books it seems to be used to describe journals. Anne Frank journaled, apparently, if Mom’s definition is correct, but called it her “diary”. And in mystery books, hidden/ secret diaries are discussed but nobody ever talks about a journal. Nancy Drew doesn’t solve a case because of The Clue in the Journal, but she does in The Clue in the Diary…

Despite my strong feelings for diaries, I have never been successful about keeping one.

I do sort of keep a writing diary, though. I got the idea first from Agatha Christie (not directly, of course, as she passed before I was born and our families are strangers) who kept notebooks of ideas and plottings and other things. She tended to grab whatever notebook she found, so they aren’t in particular order. And unrelated things of little importance now (shopping lists, etc.) are also scattered amongst the writing plans. There are two books about her “secret notebooks”, and I thought it sounded like a good idea. I use them to record my ideas, observations and thoughts as I am puzzling out plots. And in anticipation of someday being famous and having relatives looking through my things, discovering the notebooks and finding them as interesting as Agatha Christie’s did, I even went ahead and started labeling them with which number they were and the dates used. Just to make it easier for future biographers. Recently, though, I’ve begun removing the writing from the notebooks and sorting them by topic in a three-ring binder. I still prefer to write in a notebook, but it is much easier to organize my writings in one spot instead of spread throughout multiple notebooks.

I find it to be particularly helpful to write out my full thought process as I am working, as I have an easier time regaining momentum when I can just read what exactly was going through my head instead of only seeing brief notes or ideas and trying to remember what I was thinking or where I was headed before being interrupted. Also, I’ve found that I get more done and the results are better if I physically write, and not just think about things or even solely type on the computer. So that’s currently the closest I have to a true diary.

Another mystery writer, Elizabeth George, mentions in her book about writing, Write Away, that she likes to journal about her WIP as part of her routine for starting the day’s writing. She got the idea from John Steinbeck and calls it her Journal of a Novel. She keeps one for each novel she writes, and writes in it just before beginning the day’s writing work. She says that it isn’t strictly about the novel, sometimes it is just whatever is on her mind; and the length of each entry varies. But she does it consistently because she knows it will help her through whatever bad time she may encounter in the process of writing her novel. Which is why she also reads from the previous work’s journal, to show herself she has handled issues successfully before. Apparently she still struggles with feelings of doubt and inferiority, despite being a best-selling author. Each chapter in her book on writing starts with an excerpt from her Journal of a Novel, and they are insightful and helpful to me – an outsider trying to learn to write. I think they also helped her write the craft book, giving her more insight into the struggles and desires of someone trying to workout their own process for writing, and that’s helped her write one of the most truly helpful craft books I’ve come across.