"The unexamined life is not worth living." -- SocratesSome things are never written down but instead are forgotten and buried. It's a tragedy. Everything, no matter how foul or obnoxious, deserves to be written down if the thinker/writer wishes to do so. For those awful, cancerous secrets that are eating us alive there is a remedy -- the journal.
My father beat me. My mother was a crack addict. My uncle molested me. I'm an anorexic teenage prostitute. Nothing should escape the penetrating scrutiny of your journal. These horrific experiences were the basis of famous and highly profound works of memoir by brave, self-examining writers. And, these works have transformed the lives of others. Consider Anne Frank's diary and the impact it has had on the subsequent generations following her death.
The journal is the literary equivalent of the paparazzi. The images depicted in your diary will not always be flattering, in most cases you'll sound like a selfish, whining child. However shallow, ignorant or resentful a mood you may find yourself in, the journal can safely contain it, so you don't have to. Let the bitterness and anger flow onto the page. It all needs to go somewhere or else it'll bubble up to the surface and boil over into the other areas of your life like a backed up septic tank of emotional baggage.
Be aggressive in your effort to examine and expose yourself. This personal document will track an emotional trajectory that you can trace over the course of your life. You will find there are themes that reoccur in your life with different characters in place and under different circumstances. If you're like me you'll find the same mini dramas being played out over and over again, perhaps on a larger scale with more at stake. In other words, the same bully who pushed us off the monkey bars when we were eight confronts us at middle age when we argue with a boss or spouse. Hopefully we have matured a bit and act differently today than we did when we were eight. But imagine how an eight year old might capture this experience in a journal entry.
"Tommy knocked me off the monkey bars today. I hate him. I'm going to kill him tomorrow after school. I don't know how yet. Maybe poison. But I want to punch him in the jaw in front of everybody first."
Perhaps best remembered for her erotic fiction, Anaïs Nin was also a passionate diarist whose grand oeuvre, in my opinion, was her journal. The testament spanned decades and fueled much of her other work. In it were revelations about her sexual adventures, including a well known affair with the author, Henry Miller, that were shocking for the time. Loaded with fecund language and uninhibited erotic force, her diary left a lasting impression on my writing life. I highly recommend this great and often overlooked writer.
Next week -- We're kicking off our new monthly guest blogger feature. The first of our special guest bloggers, Herb Goss, a veteran TV writer/producer with over 600 aired episodes to his credit, shares his insights on the writing process.
This week's suggested website: Creative Writing Prompts - (www.creativewritingprompts.com). Over three hundred writing prompts to spark the imagination of the fiction writer as well as the journal writer. Check it out and see which ones work for you.
This week's writing prompt: Give yourself five uninterrupted minutes of quiet time. On a single sheet of paper list your strong points as a writer, e.g., dialog, description, plotting, etc. Spend a few moments defining what you do well. Next, picture where you would like to be in your career five years from now, then ten years from now. Now you have a clear goal in front of you and the strong points you listed earlier are the road map that will get you there. Fold this sheet of paper and stuff it in your journal. Have a great writing week.
." I come back to this work again and again and always get a little something more from it with each reading. I highly recommend you add it to your writer's bookshelf.