WOMEN WRITERS AND THE INFLUENCE OF KEEPING A DIARY

   Didion often approached journaling in a detached, distanced, and meticulous way. She did not dramatize or romanticize her experiences, because that would have distorted her own understanding of her reactions. For Didion, the diary was primarily meant to have a cognitive function, not to exaggerate moments or make them more memorable, but to document what sense they had in life, and how they affected her identity. 

   In her essay, “On Keeping a Notebook”, she says “I think we are all well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be… otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them… We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike… It is a good idea then, to keep in touch, and I suppose that keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about…”. This quote surmises her purpose in journaling - eliminating the fear of forgetting by extending her life to the page.  

  Anaïs Nin was a diarist known for her lifelong diaries, which she began at 11 years old and continued until her death. Alongside her diaries, she wrote fiction and romance novels. She has stated that even at 11 years old, she wrote with the intention of her writing being read by a future audience. Because of this, she altered her accounts of her daily life to exclude incriminating details about others and herself. She wrote about her life not as it technically was, but what she aspired to be, what she dreamed of it being. She has explained that, for her, the diary was a world of her own creation, an artistically idealized version of her life. “I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me… I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art. The artist is the only one who knows the world is a subjective creation, that there is a choice to be made, a selection of elements. It is a materialization, and incarnation of her inner world. Then she hopes to attract others into it, he hopes to impose this particular vision and share it with others. When the second stage is not reached, the brave artist continues, nevertheless. The few moments of communion with the world are worth their pain, for it is a world for others, an inheritance for others, a gift to others, in the end” said Nin in one oher her published volumes. Nin’s diaries were shaped around her life, but, unlike Didion, were not accurate renditions. She did not meticulate, but instead created and expressed life as she viewed it.

  Virginia Woolf was a brilliant and influential writer whose stream-of-consciousness writing and poetic prose were developed in her diary. She began devotingly keeping diary entries at 33, and continued until her death. She attested that keeping a diary highly influenced her ability to make her writing realistic yet complex. A diary, for her, was not only a place to reflect, or to express oneself, but to also expand one’s writing capabilities. By writing in her diary, she was able to get in touch with herself and her writing style. She honed her capacity to connect with and empower women by connecting with herself first. “I got out this diary and read, as one always does, read one’s own writing, with a kind of guilty intensity. I confess that the rough and random style of it, often so ungrammatical, and crying for a word altered, afflicted me somewhat…. But what is more to the point is my belief that the habit of writing thus for my own eye only is a good practice. It loosens the ligaments. Never mind the misses and the stumbles. Going at such a pace as I do I must make the most direct and instant shots at my object, and thus have to lay hands on words, choose them and shoot them with no more pause than is needed to put my pen in the ink.” - Entry from Virginia Woolf’s diary, April 20, 1919. It did not matter if she made grammatical fallacies or if her fairy entries were important, it mattered that she understood her own writing practices. Her diary was one of her most essential writing tools. 

   Susan Sontag was an activist and writer during the 1960s. She challenged public views towards women, and was vehemently against common political views at the time, such as the support for the Vietnam War. During her life, she had kept nearly 100 notebooks. To her, these notebooks were not faceless, unresponding confidantes. They were instead the form in which she created herself.  “In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself. The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather – in many cases– offers an alternative to it.” – Diary entry, 1957. Sontag believed that there was often a contradiction between the way one acts and the way one feels, and that a diary was the meeting point of these contradictions. She believed, and often expressed, that keeping a diary was the truest form of self creation. She maintained no facades in her diary, and by being so vulnerable and open, she was able to create her selfhood.