All is well (even if that's not compelling prose)

I’m afraid that as an essayist and blogger, I might find contentment to be my downfall.

It’s true of my journals, also. I set myself a minimum word count of 1,000 words per day, and there’s an undeniable inverse correlation between my level of immediate happiness on any given day and the number of words I’m able to churn out. When people are annoying me, circumstances are frustrating me, fate is confounding me, or opportunity seems not to be availing itself to me, I have plenty to say. I can write for hours on days like that. The worse mood I’m in, the more I have to say in my journal. One thousand words is nothing when I’ve descended into what cartoonist Pat Brady calls “the dungeon of resentment.”

But somehow my fingers run a little less fast and loose on the keyboard when things are looking up.

It’s not particularly logical. It seems as if there should be just as much to say about life’s more positive times as its lesser moments. I should be able to enthuse for page upon page about how great it all is. I certainly could back in high school and college, when a good day with friends or an auspicious first date could fill up my one-thousand word quota almost before I reached the end of my opening paragraph.

It’s different now, though. I sit down to attempt a new essay or newspaper column or blog entry and find myself feeling strangely devoid of commentary. “All is well,” I think to myself. “The kids are happy and healthy. We have housing and gainful employment. As far as I know, no one plans to serve us with a subpoena this month. What’s to talk about?”

Well, there’s always the option of commenting on how good it all is. But after one beta reader of my running/parenting memoir scribbled in the margins, “Enough with the gratitude!”, I’ve been a little wary of that theme. Gratitude, I’ve come to suspect, is a fine emotion with which to govern one’s soul but not such a fruitful one when it comes to incisive prose.

And no, I have definitely never reached the point of desperation at which I’d trade happiness and contentment for more writing material. Not in the least. I still suspect I once lost a job due to contentment – my overall happiness with my workload and the company in general made me too unambitious for that hard-driving, fast-innovating corporate environment – but not having enough difficult material at this particular time of my life to fill out a few essays is not, at heart, a complaint.

Life is good. It doesn’t make for compelling narrative, which is one reason that I devote the bulk of my revenue-producing writing to features about other people – I can’t rely on my own circumstances for enough hard-hitting material these days – but I’ll take it. No complaints here when everyone in my close circles appears to be happy, healthy and emotionally well-balanced. Circumstances will change; fate will throw its inevitable curve balls; and I’ll find myself writing page upon page to exorcise my darker emotions once again. But at the moment, writer’s block is a welcome, if paradoxical, sign that there’s just nothing wrong. All is well, and even if those are the only three words I can find to write on any given day, they’re good enough.

Old journals: Archive? Toss? Recycle? Pass on?

Journalist/editor Lylah Alphonse wrote here in her blog, “Write. Edit. Repeat.,” about how she is in the midst of a big decluttering project and is contemplating what to do with old journals. I know the feeling.

Like Lylah, I have a series of media on which are stored four decades of my most personal reflections: floral cloth-bound books from junior high, quaint marble-covered tablets from high school (even then I found them quaint; I just liked the way they looked), plain white typing paper from my college years, yellow lined legal pads from my twenties, and then, like Lylah, I progressed from paper to electronic journals. Also like Lylah, mine somewhat reflect the march of computer technology: floppy disks, then CDs, then thumb drives; and yes, I too know that the technology no longer exists – except maybe in computer museums – to read the files on some of those 1980’s-era floppy disks.

But it doesn’t matter to me. I don’t expect anyone to read any of these journals. Not the handwritten notebooks, not the reams of typed pages, not the computer files. They’re just too boring. How do I know this? Because I myself find them too boring to read. And I figure if anyone is going to become engrossed in my thoughts, memories, musings and experiences, it’s going to be me. It’s very hard to imagine anyone else caring. Even if some of the experiences briefly caught someone’s interest, there’s an awful lot of chaff with the meat.

But that’s okay. It’s my journal; it’s supposed to be boring. In effect, since I’m a writer by profession, my journal represents the cutting room floor. The interesting parts make it into my published articles, essays, columns and (arguably) my blog; what never gets past my journal clearly doesn’t deserve to see the light of day.

So the boxes will stay in the attic, because I cannot picture in my mind’s eye the person who would ever wish to read them. Someday my children might open them up and take a peek, but I think they’d quickly get bored. My journal is where I ruminate, analyze, argue, debate, complain. Who would want to read thousands upon thousands of words like that?

When my sisters and I were young, we found an old diary of my mother’s. We loved the fact that we’d found it, and with my mother’s (possibly grudging) permission, we read it cover to cover. But this was the diary of a 12-year-old, one who to my knowledge was not particularly interested in prose. She used it primarily for narrative purposes. Unlike me, she didn’t analyze or postulate: she briefly summarized the events of her day, and that part stayed interesting a generation later. From my mother’s diary, I learned that going to movies was something kids her age, at least in her community, did weekly if not even more often. Since movies were just an occasional treat for us, I was surprised to learn how common it was for her, and I formed the idea that it might have been because there was so little on TV at that time.

In the same way that I read about my mother going to the movies, I suppose it’s possible that a future reader of my journals might find some kind of historical interest. But really, I don’t expect there to be any future readers. The value of journal writing, as I see it, is in the process, not the product. I reap the rewards of a daily writing practice; what happens to the output really doesn't matter.

So I’ll keep writing daily, and I’ll be grateful that attic space is no longer an issue; unlike the bulky notebook days, it would take centuries, not years, to fill up a carton with the thumb drives on which I now store my journal files. And if my children or anyone else is ever tempted? As long as I’m not here to have to answer their questions about content (“Really, Mom, why did it matter so much that Daddy didn’t empty the dishwasher?”), I’m fine with it. But they should be forewarned: it’s pretty boring stuff. And I promise already that I’m not insulted if they take a look and then decide to forego the rest.

Keeping a journal: Two perspectives

Columnist Beverly Beckham wrote in yesterday’s Boston Globe about keeping a diary. I always read Beckham’s columns not because I find her ideas particularly profound but because I really admire her simple, direct way with language. She has a talent that I do not for expressing her ideas with un-self-conscious clarity. As Strunk and White would say, she uses subjects and verbs. As some one who struggles with a surplus of adverbs and adjectives, I envy Beckham’s ease with the written word.

I wrote a few months ago in this blog about my writing streak, but that entry focused more on how to write regularly than why to write regularly. Reading Beckham’s column, I realized I hadn’t given that much thought recently. Yes, I’ve kept a journal regularly since I was in sixth grade and daily, with my 1,000-words-a-day streak, since late 1994. But why?

Beckham ends her essay with this typically eloquent statement: “My journal makes me remember. And that’s why I write.” Interesting, I thought when I first read it. Because my journal doesn’t make me remember at all, for the reason that I barely ever reread it. My journal is for me a process, not a product. It doesn’t matter what I’ve written; the act of writing it was what mattered. In writing one thousand words a day, I process certain thoughts so that I can then move on and, ideally, get to other, fresher thoughts. Or maybe not; maybe I keep dwelling on the same few thoughts. I wouldn’t know, since I don’t re-read except on very rare occasions.

But within Beckham’s essay is a very good explanation for why she and I differ on this point. Her journals sound like small works of art, with ticket stubs, postcards and emails pasted on to the pages. She spends considerable time choosing the actual vessel for her journal, too, perusing Barnes & Noble’s journal shelves with an eye toward color, size, materials and cover design.

Not me. In fact, my journal doesn’t actually exist. Not in any form that I can paste ticket stubs and concert programs into, anyway. And the color of the cover certainly isn’t a factor. My journal has been solely electronic since about 2000. First, of course, as a girl in the 1980’s, I wrote longhand; then in college I typed (with my little portable electronic typewriter, a long-gone precursor to today’s laptops; my roommate always said that I looked like Schroeder from the Peanuts comic strip bent over the piano). In my 20’s I started writing on computer but printing out. Not until about a decade ago did I question the point of printing out the entries. I was filling up a lot of attic space with binders – this was private, after all; not something I’d be displaying on my living room bookshelves – and the printing and filing was somewhat labor-intensive.

So now I simply save to an electronic file. And yes, I do back up those files. So if I really need to look back at something, I can find it with a mouse click. But that hardly ever happens.

If not to remember, then, why do I write? Because writing what’s on my mind every morning frees up metaphorical desk space on my metaphorical hard drive – the one inside my brain – to think about other things. And because I believe that thinking is circular whereas writing is linear. When I mull over a problem, I keep circling back to where I began; but when I write it out, I tend to progress from point A to point B. I’m also a believer in the “Write it down, make it happen” credo: many days I write rambling breakdowns of tasks I need to accomplish during the day, believing that recording in my journal increases the odds it will get done.

Both journal systems – electronic and ornately designed, shelf-worthy hard copy – are worthwhile, and both of us have reasons that make sense. Beverly Beckham and I are both writers; we feel better when we write. Neither of us expects our journals to matter to anyone but us. But we write anyway. To remember. Or to forget. As practice. As process. To commemorate and to move on. For so many reasons, we write.

A room (or booth or carrel or pew) of one's own: Where to write

Location, location, location.

It’s one of the tips I give when asked to talk about daily writing practice and how to implement the habit: Vary your venue. Try writing in different places and at different times of day. Test out a little of everything to see what works best.

For the most part, of course, continuity and regularity are important in establishing a habit. Same time and same place every day may seem like the best choices to make if you want to establish consistency in a habit, whether it’s writing or exercising or getting to bed at a particular time.

But I think it’s also beneficial to try out different writing spots. Six o’clock in the morning, at my desk in my home office, gazing out at the trees and watching the sky very slowly brighten, is my usual. But three in the afternoon at Starbucks can be nice too. As can lunchtime at the public library, or midafternoon on a Saturday by the side of the pool while my kids are swimming.

Having written daily nonstop for fifteen years, I’ve tried out a lot of locales. Cafes and bookstores by the dozens, of course. But also playgrounds. Beaches. Restaurants. Airports. Airplanes. Parking lots. Parking garages. Church. Yes, I journaled in church. Not during a service; during the rehearsal for the Christmas pageant when I had nothing else I needed to do.

First of all, it’s just fun to see what it’s like to write in different places. Not surprisingly, the varying scenery and ambience can inspire your writing in so many different ways: the aromas at the coffee shop, the overheard conversations on the beach, the parade of people passing by at the airport. And a good cup of coffee or pastry can make you feel like you’re rewarding yourself for taking the time to write. Plus it’s motivating sometimes just to feel like people are watching you. “Oh look, a writer,” you imagine them thinking, and then you tell yourself, “I’d better keep my fingers moving or they’ll suspect I have nothing important to say.” Even better if they are people you know: you tell yourself “Oooh, they see I’m writing. I’d better not stop and open up that magazine.”

And you don’t necessarily need silence to write. Not for journal writing, anyway. While it might be difficult if people are talking directly to you, ambient background noise can be great. I like busy coffee shops for just this reason: sometimes I can write at my best when there are baristas bantering and espresso machines whirring, just as I sometimes do my most productive thinking while listening to the BBC, which I’m afraid tells you something about my ability to grasp world events presented with an intellectual spin.

For the sake of maintaining the habit, it’s not bad to pick a few standard times and places around which to center your writing habit. But be flexible, too. Try a little of everything and see how it changes what you write.

Maintaining a daily writing habit: Here's what works for me

I’ve been invited to speak to a local women’s group about keeping a journal, so I’ve spent some time over the past few days trying to pull my thoughts together around a topic that for me feels largely intuitive, and yet still merits articulation once in a while. Daily writing: Why do it? And if you want to do it, how?

Though I make a big deal of being a daily or “streak” runner, I hardly ever think about the fact that I’m a streak journal-keeper as well. It’s become such a habit that I don’t even acknowledge it most of the time, but not since late 1994 have I missed a day of writing in my journal, when I finally realized it was easier to write every day than to skip days and then have a sense that there was “catching up” to do. As I frequently say, journaling is so much like running or any other kind of exercise: the longer you go without doing it, the harder it is to start up again, so it’s easier and certainly more mindless to just set out with a pre-defined commitment – which could be every day, but it could also be every other day, three times a week, even once a week – and stick to it rather than begin every day with a “Should I or shouldn’t I” question.

When I was younger I wrote before bed, summing up the events of the day just gone by. When I was in college, sometimes it was very late at night, well into the wee hours of the next day in fact, but I often felt like I couldn’t go to sleep until I’d processed the events of the day in writing. It was almost as if the day hadn’t officially happened until I’d made note of it.

These days I follow the method set out by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way and The Right to Write, which Cameron calls Morning Pages. The idea is to write three fast pages the minute you get out of bed in the morning. Three pages doesn’t work well for me as a benchmark since Cameron is talking about longhand and I always keyboard, so I use one thousand words as my minimum goal. Back when I was writing longhand, I used ten minutes as my framework. I don’t think it matters, though, whether you go by word count or duration or physical pages; it’s just a matter of getting yourself to stay with whatever measuring stick you’ve chosen.

And the reason I think it’s important to choose one of these benchmarks goes back to the idea of never having to decide whether or not this is a good day for writing. If you’ve committed to ten minutes, as I used to, then on those days when you feel like you have nothing to say, you’ll find something. You won’t revert to the all-too-easy “Nothing much going on” entry, or if you do, you’ll write past it. I employ a lot of journaling techniques that delve into the abstract or hypothetical. For example, if you find yourself writing “Not much going on today,” you can then pose the hypothetical statement: “But here’s what I wish were going on.” If you find yourself writing “I don’t feel like writing today,” use the rest of your ten minutes to take that next step “…because this is what is distracting me and keeping me from wanting to write.”

Often, I just write the same way children keep diaries, describing the here-and-now of the previous twenty-four hours. Finished an article; talked to my sister; went on a three-mile run; can’t wait to pick up that new novel at the library. Mundane, everyday events fill the pages of my journals, and have for years. I almost never re-read them. The point for me is the exercise: keeping a daily journal compels me to process my thoughts and feelings (or face the fact that I am avoiding them), and, just as with running, it keeps me at a certain “fitness” level. When I have to write something fast for work, it never seems like a strain, since I’m so accustomed to sitting down and writing, whether I have anything to say or not. Faced with an article assignment that I have no idea how to begin, I do the same thing as with my journal: I just start writing anything, to see if I can get through the mental static and make my way to the point.

Key points if you want to write regularly:

1) Find the time and place that work best for you. It might be 6 AM in your home office, which is what I do; it might be 3 PM at your local coffee shop or library; it might be 9 PM after your family has settled down and the house is quiet. It might even be in your parked car for ten minutes before you go into work. Experiment with different possibilities.

2) Choose your target benchmark for minimum output, whether it’s word count, duration in minutes or number of pages.

3) If you feel like you have nothing to say, write about nothing. Write about not having anything to say. Write about what you wish you had to say. Write about why you don’t want to say what you have to say.

4) It takes three weeks to build a habit. Decide your frequency goal, whether it’s daily or a certain number of times per week, and commit to that for at least three weeks.

5) Have someplace you can jot down thoughts that come to you during the day that you want to write about, and turn to that list when you next sit down to your journal.

As the late writer Donald Murray, a published poet, UNH writing instructor and Boston Globe columnist, often said, “Nulla dies sine linea – never a day without a line.” Ultimately, it’s easier to just sit down and write than to put off writing. And it only gets easier with practice.