“What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it. Dull to the contemporary who reads it and invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it.” ~Walter Scott
I can agree with Mr. Scott on that. I’ve made good use of several diaries when working on this or that book. But keeping a diary can be good in more ways than that. Years ago, while I was sitting with my mother during her last illness, I saw a television program where a doctor asked the audience what could make a person live longer.
The audience had several choices that all turned out to be true. I don’t remember any of them. So, we can guess about some of them. Exercising? Healthy diets? Having friends? Faith in the Lord? A loving church family? I wouldn’t remember the one I’m sharing with you in this post if I hadn’t gone back into my archives to pull up an old post to share with you again after lots of editing.
I can understand why this one caught my interest then and again now. When I watched the program and first wrote about it I had to wonder if I might be gifted with a few extra years of life if journal writing helps.
I’ve been writing in a journal since I was a teen. Now I have been writing in this on-line journal a couple of times a week since January 2008. That is sixteen years, and this post is number 1,926. Wow! If I’d put all those words into a manuscript I would have written a lot more books. But words in journals don’t make books. They are thoughts and feelings and things to share in 500 to 800 or so words. They are words spilled out as you think. They don’t necessarily join up with the last words you spilled out in a post. Each post can be its own individual story. For books, I have to come up with different words that tie together beginning to end to tell a story.
Anyway, for that old post in 2012, I pulled out my old journal to see what I might find. Yes, of course I still have it. A journal keeper can’t throw away handwritten words! So here’s a line from one of my first journal entries. “This is my fifteenth summer & so far it hasn’t been much.”
Doesn’t that sound like a teenage thought for a country girl? But somehow for years I’ve found something to write about even if it wasn’t much. According to that show I watched those years ago, whether it was much or not, I was doing something healthy when I took pen in hand and started writing to myself.
Here’s another bit I dipped into the old journal and found that made me smile. “When (and if) I get married, I’m going to keep my house where spring cleaning won’t be necessary.” It must have been spring cleaning time at my house. Mom did that every year. We even dragged the old springs that weren’t boxed up back in the day out into the yard to dust every spring. I hated that chore.
Anyway, I actually probably believed that part about keeping my house so clean when I was writing those words. Some goal, huh? And one that I conveniently forgot for all these years. Of course, I forgot to spring clean too. Spring zooms by so fast I don’t have time to get out the brooms and mops. I’m too busy writing in my journal.
That one made me smile but some of those early entries made me cringe when I read them. I was so very young. The doctors didn’t say reading what you wrote years ago in a journal makes you live longer. LOL. So maybe it’s better to write and then forget about what you’ve written the way I did about that keeping my house spic and span.
Over the years, I’m sure I’ve written a million or so words – to myself. It’s a great way to let off steam. A journal is a good place to whine and complain without casting a pall over anybody else’s world. But it’s also a good place to rejoice and celebrate and remember. I am happy to know it might give me a few extra years if I fill up journals (or write these posts) whether with important words or not.
Here’s another entry made after I did get married. Wasn’t much “if” to that after all. “No, I have nothing extremely important to tell you, but sometimes it’s more fun to just begin writing with no special thought.”
Here’s a quote from John Irving that I liked enough to share back in 2012 and like enough to share again.
When I was still in prep school – 14, 15 – I started keeping notebooks, journals. I started writing, almost like landscape drawing or life drawing. I never kept a diary, I never wrote about my day and what happened to me, but I described things. ~John Irving
I like Irving’s thought of doing life drawing. Whether I did that or not, I always imagined I was writing to someone when I wrote in my journals. And now I am writing this to share with you reading friends here. It could be you are helping me add on some of those extra years. Thank you.
Have you ever kept a journal?
Comments 14
I have kept journals for many years. I do not write in them every day, but tend to do so when I am troubled or experiencing new adventures. I have always said that I never felt the need for a therapist as I pour my feelings and troubles into a journal. Then pray about them. Now, I even construct my own journals. Very relaxing.
(For you only). I wrote you several years ago. We determined that our husbands were distant cousins through his mother who was a Gabhart from Mercer county, Kentucky. I enjoy the fact that you you use so much early Kentucky history in your books. Jack’s mother was a nurse at the coal mining town of Lynch, Kentucky during the late 1920’s.
Author
Journals are good therapy when you can write down your problems or worries and try to sort things out that way, Shirley. It used to help me with writing quandaries for sure. Maybe I should start doing more private time journaling again to get my story going.
Interesting about your husband’s relative being a nurse in a coal mining town. Migth be the seed of an idea to a new story.
I’ve kept a journal for many, many years. It’s nice to look back from time to time and see what God has done in my life.
Author
Journals are a great way to keep blessings in mind and see how life has been good even when we may have thought it wasn’t, Janette. Not sure if that makes sense, but when we write things down, it helps us recall things we might have let slip out of our minds. So much of what we’ve done or seen can fade into forgetfulness but can be recalled and brought back to mind by the right snippets of words to help us remember.
I kept a journal when I was younger, and didn’t for years. However, when Mom passed on to her heavenly home back in December, 2020, I decided to start again. Someone gave me a “Grateful” journal, and I used it. It really helped me to focus on good things, no matter how small, that happened during that trying time. And, I’ve kept up with writing in journals since.
Author
A Grateful journal sounds like Lavon’s Praise journal, Trudy. Very good ideas to keep a person focused on the good things in life. I’m sure it helped you remember so many of the good things about your mother as you remembered the small blessings of life.
I’ve always had a diary or journal and try to write daily in my praise journal. I started out with those little diaries with a tiny key as a kid. I wrote about everything and probably used them to vent my frustrations with brothers.
Journals are so important for keeping history alive. We wouldn’t know a thing about our ancestors if no one had kept a journal. My grandmother left me a treasure trove of stories in her journals, scrapbooks and genealogy writings. My mother kept sporadic journals, but in later years she wrote daily snippets and the day’s weather on her calendar. It was fun to look back through the year and see what had happened.
Author
Sounds as though you come from a line of journal writers, Lavon. I’m with you that those journals are wonderful for keeping history alive. I have enjoyed using them for research, and a book a grandson compiled of the letters his grandfather wrote to his grandmother during World War I were invaluable when I was writing Angel Sister and had my main male character a soldier in that war. You come across little snippets that don’t make the history books but make the scene and history come to life.
A praise journal sounds like a great journal to keep daily. I know many people keep a prayer journal too.
And weren’t those little keys the neatest? I did sometimes lose mine. Maybe that’s when I would quit writing in those diaries. A notebook made a better journal anyway. Lots more room for me to get wordy.
Yes, ever since I was a teenager, I’m now 62.
Author
You have recorded your life, Lisa. Very neat. I’ve sometimes wondered if I should destroy those entries I wrote when I was a teenager, but so far I haven’t.
I kept a diary when I was a teenager and kept one off and on as an adult. My mother kept diaries for many years until she died. I have them now and enjoyed reading them. I once found a set of diaries at a yard sale and bought them all. They were written by a woman who started them as a teen and kept up all her life. She was a farm wife and it was so interesting to read about an earlier time in our area. Before we moved to another state, I donated them to the county historical society. The lady never had children so I guess there was no interest in them by any of her relatives. Hence the selling of them.
Author
That is so neat that you bought a woman’s diary and read it, Lee. I’m guessing that might have made the woman who recorded her life happy. I enjoy reading books that have diary entries. I’ve done that in a book or two and sometimes have used letters, but my previous editor didn’t really like that way of telling a story. I’ve always been impressed by a writer who can tell an entire story that way. Also great of you to donate the diaries to the historical society in that area. I hope others had an interest in reading them too.
My mom wrote in journals. I have them now. I need to get them out and read them again.
When I was 12 or 13 I started a 5-year diary and eventually wrote in 3 of those little books that “locked” with a key. Marriage and family took over and I haven’t done journaling since then.
Author
I got a couple of those little diaries with a key, Nadine. The key to actually lock them was super neat. But I could never keep up the daily writing. Maybe because I didn’t have much to write about if I was just writing what I was doing. I’d keep it up for a few weeks and then lose interest. Journaling suited me better even then where I could write something whenever the mood struck. But good for you, keeping it up for three of those diaries.