I meant to write about similes and metaphors today, but something happened on my way to the computer room. As I passed by the ceiling to floor bookcases in my den, two rows of crimson-backed journals caught my attention. Thinking about nothing in particular, I counted the volumes. More than 40 years of my life were contained in these journals. The first ones go back to a time I've all but forgotten. Grade School, Junior High, High School crushes, music lessons, old friends, teachers, grandparents and parents, hopes, dreams -- all lost now, all just remembrances on dusty pages.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor, I remove a volume and leaf through the days. Tears fill my eyes as I recover events that once seemed, no, were, important to a teenager. The next years reveal world events, changes in society, dates, places, and fears of a young mother fighting to save a doomed marriage. Then, dark, fearful days as a single mother back in an alien work force, aspirations of stardom and fame set aside for the more mundane aspects of life. Quickly, I move forward in time seeking brighter memories, times of joy that surely are recorded here.
I spent the day reliving all my yesterdays, all my tears, and all my life's joys within the pages of my personal journals. Why had I begun them? Did I somehow know that I would not have a long career in music or on the stage? Did I know that my real purpose in life was to become a writer? The answers to those questions were held between the covers of these books.
The evolution was gradual, the path star-crossed, yet revealing. My heart knew all along the secrets the mind could not comprehend. Buried within the child, the teen, the young frantic mother, the wife who found love and fulfillment in a second marriage, and yes in the tragedies depicted, was the real soul, the real me, the writer.
The writer understood the value of these journals. The writer knew that the philosophies expressed, the pain crying out from the pages, the elation of victories and the horrors of defeat, all of them were but fodder for pen and paper. A treasure trove of ideas, feelings, action and reaction all laid out waiting to be used at the proper moment. All the days of my life laid out to be recaptured, and for forming into articles, short stories, novels. Thousands of memories on every conceivable topic all ripe for harvesting.
"There," I said to myself, "there is your article. Tell them about the Journals of life and why writers should keep them."
If you already keep a journal, then I don't have to convince you, you are hooked already. But in case you need a little convincing, here's why journal-keeping is so important to a writer. I've already mentioned a few of the "whys." There are more.
Journals help you stay sane in the midnight hours when the muse fails you. They record feelings, and thoughts written in the heat of passion or sorrow that give an immediate voice to your work. Each volume is an inward journey of whom and what you were at that moment in time. No censors here, no blanking out of emotion, no "Oh, dear, I shouldn't have written that." These are raw, from the heart, revelations of a work in progress you, the writer.
Elaine Farris Hughes in her book WRITING FROM THE INNER SELF says, ". . . Many famous writers have kept journals faithfully and have published excerpts from them. If you need further inspiration for starting your own, look at the journals of Anais Nin, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Merton, Faulkner, Steinbeck," and others.
And, if all that fails to inspire you to keep journals, think of that young life waiting beyond the veil of time who will meet his or her great-great-grandparent in these volumes and perhaps be inspired to write.
For what it is worth, this unexpected article is my very personal gift to you, and it is from the heart of a writer.
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(Jones is a book critic for The Tulsa World, Tulsa, OK, and The Camden Times, Camden, New York.)
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