Diary of a Mad Editor

I’m going to make a confession to you: I’m a writer who hasn’t kept a regular journal in years.  I think I probably stopped keeping a regular journal right around the time they started using the word “journal” as a verb as in, “Sasha has been spending her free time journaling.”  Writer or not, who the hell wants to be associated with that activity? It’s just so unmanly, ya know? But seriously, I think my regular use of the computer ultimately led to me putting down my regular daily journal. There is just something about the immediacy of the almighty keyboard that made the act of keeping a journal all but irrelevant for me. 

Which is not to say, I don’t occasionally jot things down in a notebook when I can’t otherwise access a computer.  There was a time when I tried to replace my little black notebook with a handheld device, but for me that proved more trouble than it was worth.  My sister gave me a PDA one year for my birthday and I did use it for a time, but I kept forgetting to charge the thing and everytime the battery went dead, I’d lose everything I had stored on it. 

I lost the little black notebook a few years ago and hadn’t seen it since — that is until the other day when it turned up while I was cleaning out a closet. 

It’s funny to see some of the odd bits scribbled on it’s pages.  Stupid little notes like:

“I just stepped on a Jujube —

Jujube (the candy, not to be confused with the fruit or the Ju Ju Be line of diaper bags)”

or

“Beginnings are the hardest thing about creating a novel.

It’s hard to know when a story truly begins. Does it begin with an insult or the first thoughts of revenge? Maybe it begins with a bullet or the indignity of dying on the bathroom floor of a public restroom in a pool of blood and filth.

It seems to me to be a matter of trusting one’s instincts as there isn’t a universal rule that works in every situation . . .”

How about this note about Paua Fox’s novel Desperate Characters:

“I suppose what astonishes me about DC is how it reminds me of the old Bogart film Desperate Hours.  Whereas Deparate Hours concerns a middle class family being held hostage by an escaped convict, the couple in DC are similarly held hostage, albeit of their own device.”

Here’s another notation about Sol Stein’s book, How to Grow a Novel:

“. . . a pragmatic guide to evaluating a first draft for revision, but I find his tendency to boast about his own accomplishments irritating. I lost track of how many times he mentioned his own novel “The Magician” or the fact that he’s a well-known book editor/publisher. Give it a rest, buddy!”

There’s lots of crap in this little black book (hell, there’s probably a couple a dozen ideas for new blog posts alone) — bits of stories and poems, some completed and since published and others best fed to an open garbage can, letters to friends, lists, recipies, schedules, figures (I’m terrible at math).

Reading through those old bits, I was reminded why it’s important for writers to keep a journal — not so much because it’s a direct path to creating that masterpiece, but because it’s like applying grease to the machinery of the imagination.  A way to keep all the gears moving and also remain accountable for one’s own thoughts. There’s something about the effect of pushing a pen on actual paper that beating a keyboard, for all of it’s expediancy and productivity, cannot replicate.  Reading those bits, I kept thinking: This is me, my thoughts, as stupid and/or as brilliant as I could be at that moment in time.  No denying it.  No delete button.  No plausible deniability. Just what it is.

So, I don’t know, maybe keeping a journal isn’t quite so irrelavent after all.  Maybe I should give it a whirl once again.