Post #25 – Memoir Writing, Journaling – Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett
………………………
SEE NOTE AT BOTTOM OF THIS POST ABOUT A LIMITED-TIME OFFER ON A FREE EBOOK ON JOURNALING.
………………………
Journaling and Memoir Writing
A lifetime of journaling is an incredible gift for a memoir writer. Can’t remember the name of your first boyfriend? Get out your journal. Uncertain about your emotions on the day before you married? Pull that journal off the shelf. What was it your mother always said when you came in after curfew? Look it up in your journal.
Besides the obvious benefit of having journals to help you sort through your life when you choose to write a memoir, journaling provides healing for many on a daily basis and provides an opportunity to reflect and gain insights. If journals are used as a rich information resource for the memoir writer, then that is a bonus.
So, although journals are typically private and their contents rarely become public (at least in comparison with how many are kept), Susan Wittig Albert has broken the public/private barrier and published one of her journals — the one for 2008 that became her chronicle of ordinary days that became an extraordinary year.
Tomorrow, we’ll publish Susan’s guest blog and writing prompt. I think you’ll get a great deal out of it. At the same time, it prompted me to ask three questions and Susan has answered all of them. With her permission, I am sharing these with you today in anticipation of tomorrow’s post.
Q.1. Why did you start journaling in 1968?
Susan Wittig Albert: I started journaling because I was opening a new chapter in my life. I had moved from Illinois to Berkeley to go to grad school, it was clear that my marriage was not going to survive the transition, and everything in my life seemed to be changing. It felt as if I were jumping off a cliff. I needed to document that.
Q.2. I imagine that you started journaling with a certain amount of enthusiasm. Did the enthusiasm, or perhaps I should say, determination, ever lag in the early weeks or months? What did you do to keep yourself journaling?
Susan Wittig Albert: There were so many crises in those Berkeley years that I literally fled to my journal for refuge. It was sister-mother-mentor-friend. I was compelled. After grad school, I moved again, into another round of crises (new teaching position, new city, new relationships). There was always something I needed to record, explore. That’s the important word, for me: self-exploration. The journals are maps of who I was at the time, and of the process of becoming.
Q.3. How do you characterize what you journal about? I know you include some elements that others might not think about such as reflections on books you are reading and meaningful quotes. Did you always put those elements into your journals? In other words, how has your journaling changed over the years since 1968?
Susan Wittig Albert: The content of the journals reflects my interests at the time. Romances and lusts (these were the free love days, when women were giving themselves permission to explore all kinds of relationships), children, job/career, writing, sailing, gardening, and so on. Quotes: lots, always. Reading notes: yes, but mostly after 1985, when I left the university. News clips: that’s recent, after 2005. But the main change has been the medium–from pen/notebook (1968-1984) to various computer programs. The handwritten notebooks reveal the emotional charge that pushed my pen; the computer files are longer, because typing is faster and I write more.
Use this link if you prefer the Kindle version of Susan Wittig Albert’s book.
Interested in Journaling? Limited-Time Offer on Free-Ebook
Perhaps you have been thinking about journaling — either starting the practice or resuming after a number of years. We want to offer you an excellent ebook written by our regular guest blogger on journaling, Amber Starfire. Amber is the author of: Journaling Essentials: Everything You Need to Know to Start and Keep a Journal, a $7.95 value that will be free only for a limited time. If you haven’t already gotten this ebook, we urge you to do so now as Amber no longer offers it for free on her site and we have promised that we’ll take it off our site soon. To get it, click here.
