I remember
reading (somewhere in a book review, I believe) that John Quincy Adams, the
sixth president of the United States, was the original tweeter. Not that they
had Twitter, or even computers, back then, but he kept a journal that was
notable, even by the standards of the time, for its sparse entries.
For
example, in the section of his journal dealing with the period of an ocean
voyage — high drama in those times — the entry for a given day might read
simply, “High winds, rough seas today.” That sort of thing.
Several
years ago, I tried keeping a journal and stayed with it for close to a year
before drifting away from the project and eventually abandoning it. One of the
reasons for letting it go was that I was having a hard time getting beyond
descriptions of the minutiae of any given day, and my days, frankly, aren’t
that exciting for the most part. In short, my writing suffered from John Quincy
Adams disease.
Writing Fiction Makes a Difference
During the
period of my journal-keeping, I wasn’t writing fiction, and now that I am —
with two mystery novels published on Amazon and a third on the way — I decided
a few weeks ago to give the personal journal another try. I went to the local
stationery store, bought a Moleskine journal, lined up my fountain pens, and
set to the task.
Part of the
impetus for this was that our son, Nick, was home for Christmas from the Army.
He spent two and a half weeks with us before heading back to Fort Campbell, KY,
from whence he is expected to be deployed overseas within a couple of months.
We may not
see him again until next Christmas, and possibly not even then, so I wanted to
write down not only what we were doing during our time together, but also my
impressions of him and his situation. I don’t know if my fiction-writing
experience was the reason or not, but I felt that this time around the journal
was going better and becoming much more than a simple document of the day’s
activities. I feel pretty good about the results so far and plan to keep going
with it.
Passing on the Tradition
Keeping a
journal is a worthwhile activity for anyone, and particularly for a writer.
There’s something about writing things down by hand that engraves them in your
mind in a way that typing them into a computer just doesn’t do. And for a
writer, it’s a good way of recording material — the details and observations that
could end up being incorporated into a story or novel.
Nick is
observant and a fairly capable writer, though I can’t see him ever doing it for
a living. Nevertheless, it occurred to me as I was starting my journal, that
perhaps I should encourage him to do the same when he goes overseas. So as an
extra present for Christmas, I bought him his own Moleskine journal and a good
gel pen, wrapping them up along with a note suggesting that he write down his
impressions while abroad.
I don’t
know if he’ll do that; he is, after all, 24 and under no compunction to heed
his father’s advice. But if he does decide to keep the journal, I have little
doubt that as the years go by, he’ll be glad he did.
