Confession. I have a passion for reading other people’s diaries. Virginia Woolf. Oliver Sacks. Helen Garner. I collect them. I devour them and then I find myself reading them over and over again, taking different things from their innermost thoughts every single time. Writing advice. Recipes. Insight into the ups and downs of a life that was lived. These precious diaries are mirrors held up that show we humans have so much in common with one another and that there are wonderful quirks that make each of us incredibly interesting individuals.
When I first did The Artist’s Way I grappled long and hard with the fear of being read. I felt like I was writing for an unknown future audience and was curating the thoughts I was willing to put down on the Page. The intention of Morning Pages is to be completely honest with yourself as the sole reader of the words you write.
It took me a while but I got there and, oh, how freeing it was to release thoughts and ideas and feelings without censorship!
I recently saw a post by a fellow follower of Julia Cameron who summarised Morning Pages as ‘three pages of freeform writing, first thing in the morning, a mind dump, that you then destroy’. Oh no! Was I meant to destroy them? If only I had known that when I first started the program! I actually think it could have been a good thing to do if I had ceremonially burned them from page 1 on day 1. But not now. It’s too late!!! I have such a thrill when I flick back through the words of even a month ago, let alone years ago. I learn a lot about myself. I get excited about ideas that were born and needed time to grow and are now ready for me to pay them attention. I remember, so much, feelings and events and people and places that have not been on my mind but are welcome back. I’ve worked up ideas for novels and stories, explored different career options, examined issues from every angle until I have the next step to take.
No, I need these books! But the fear has never left me.
After the release of her collection of diaries Helen Garner’s admission that she (shock, horror!) burned all of her notebooks written up until her early 20s is one that is met with dismay. All those beautiful words, lost to history forever. The first Act in a life otherwise documented and catalogued for posterity never to be known by anyone other than Helen in the moment she lived it. I look across at my own beloved collection of journals and am met by a similar thought to that which prompted the younger Helen to build a bonfire with her own. Holy crap! What if someone reads these???
As a recovered teenager who never trusted herself to truly express those feelings driven by hormonal heights out of fear that even I would be horrified by what was there and even more terrified that someone else would discover those diaries and hold me to account for those unfiltered and ill-advised feelings, I don’t think I had ever truly shucked the fear of discovery off my back. In early journals I agonised over the topics I chose and the words I selected to capture them.
Because everything we say or write is always within a context, isn’t it? So many facets and angles to any idea, so many possible things going on at the time they are written, so many influences that are not captured to give any future reader an idea of what was going in in the world of the writer when those particular words fell from pen to page.
The saving grace would be to get the opportunity Helen Garner has taken into her own hands which is to edit and package her personal notebooks herself while she still can. She gets to choose what is shared and what is kept aside. She gets the chance to own those words and explain them, if she decides it’s necessary.
David Sedaris published his thoughts as a lucid comedic conversation. Virginia Woolf surely had an idea that, as a published author, her private papers would one day become public. She left instructions, in fact, that her papers be destroyed. She couldn’t bring herself to do it… and neither could her husband, who eventually published them for all the world to see.
These prolific and celebrated writers had a readership who cared, who were invested in their stories and in them as people, some of whom felt they were ‘owed’ the inner workings of their revered hero. I have no doubt there was a financial incentive to sell these inner thoughts. I bought them, after all! But what about the rest of us journal-writers who are regular people living average lives?
I made the mistake of trying to estimate how many volumes of diaries are out there in the world and had to take to my bed and rest with a cool face washer on my forehead to recover from the incalculable enormity of the concept.
I guess these works fuel many fires and make a great deal of the recycling and landfill.
I look at my precious pile of words and I know that I cannot destroy them. I also know that I will never know when it will be too late to take the time to review them and present them in a more palatable way for those I love to deal with after I have gone. I have the urge to explain… Perhaps I could include a caveat on the front page of every single one of them that will somehow warn a future reader to remember that I am a human being who was terribly fallible and often at the mercy of both emotion and inspiration, and that the impact of both are to be found within the covers of this creation. Don’t take any of it as fact and enjoy much of it as fiction borne of human frailty!
Yes I think I might do that. Just refer back to this post. It explains everything.
Feel free to destroy them unread, I won’t know and I won’t be upset by it. Up to you. But, if you do decide to take a peek, remember that you have been warned. Just make sure you read with care. Human thoughts. Evidence of emotion, excitement and ambition. Best read with wine and chocolate. Tissues handy for both laughter and tears. Good luck.