I’ve kept journals faithfully since I was about 20. When I finish one, I toss it into a huge box ‘with the others’.
Recently, I decided to embark on what I call ‘The Journal Project’. I’m working on a poetry book and wanted to generate a whole lot of new material, so that only my very best stuff will end up in the book. I see a lot of poetry books published with what I call ‘filler’ poems – the poems that are ‘meh’, that are ‘ok’, that have one or two nice lines but aren’t that great as a whole. Because I’m a virgo, a control freak, a perfectionist…I want to produce a book full of the very best poems I am capable of writing. I have plenty of ‘filler’ poems – but I don’t want to use them in the manuscript.
I know – pretty high standards for myself…and it means a couple of things – firstly, I can keep stringing out this book writing thing because ‘it’s not there yet, not yet’ and secondly, probably my very best writing is some amazingly talented poet’s ‘filler’.
Anyway, I thought a good way to generate some new material might be to read through my old journals – see if there are the seeds of poems there, or if just revisiting my younger selves triggers memories etc. So I got the journals out (there are 32) put them in chronological order and started at the beginning – the university years.
It’s kinda painful really. Not dark painful, but squirmy and embarrased painful. There is all that insecure, angsty stuff of one’s early 20s. But it’s good, illuminating – and it is resulting in new poems and other writings, not to mention a whole lot of reflection on my life – which can’t be a bad thing, right?
I’ve gotten as far as my OE to England. I’m looking forward to getting into my child-having years, because then I might actually recognize the person writing as myself. At the moment the breathless young thing scrawling excitedly about music and boys and feminism seems like someone I vaguely knew once, very long ago.
One things for sure – I’ve come a long way, baby. And I can say with some certainty that apart from perhaps my flawless, unwrinkly skin and thinner butt, I would not go back to those early 20-something years for anything.
I like the ‘me’ of today much more.
May 3, 2009 at 10:16 pm
I totally recognise what you’re saying. I too am a journal-writer – I’ve been keeping them erratically since I was about 15 (and read ‘Becoming a Writer’ by Dorothea Brand). I’m to terrified to read the earlier stuff – I’m pretty sure there is lots of that gushing about boys and lots of embarrassing stuff. But lately, like you, I’ve just recently been reading over some, also for poetry. I wanted to remember where I was at around 2003/2004 to help me revise a poetry series I’ve drafted. It’s really good to have something like a journal to go back to see where you’ve come from, and how far you’ve come. That was only about 5 years ago, but I was surprised to see that I’ve moved on from some of the things that were bothering me at the time, and I’m still progressing with others.
I notice from your photo of your journals that you have a lot of different kinds. Over the years I’ve gotten fussier and fussier about what I’ll write in. I used to write in any old exercise book, but now I’ve settled on A5, wiro bound notebooks, which must have lined pages, and a pretty cover. Nothing else will do!
I hope you are inspired to write some fantastic poems from what you’re reading.
May 4, 2009 at 8:11 am
As you know I have kept them in the past (since I read Harriet the Spy as a child) but burnt most when I was in my 20’s due to them being read by unauthorised folk.
I think you are very brave digging it all up and I’m sure some cracker poems will result.
xx
May 6, 2009 at 11:33 pm
i have an odd collection of journals and diaries sporadically kept since my teens. i also have every letter sent to me in the 10 years i lived overseas. all stored in boxes under the house. i would love to spend time with them like this. small children beckoning more often than not. go well in your travels.