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Book Review: The New Diary — October Memoir Challenge — 8 Comments

  1. So nice Joy. I haven’t ever been able to keep a diary…absolutely no discipline. I did read The Artist’s Way and have been doing the automatic writing here and there for months, years, but sometimes only days till I give it up for a while. I like sketchbooks though. I sketch and write and stick things in them and keep a sort of multi-purpose scrap book of ideas and life. Funny though, I made my children keep travel journals (sketchbooks usually) for trips and thru summers or years abroad and the kids think these are treasures to them now. So that was one idea which worked.

    • Tristine Rainer would call “a sort of multi-purpose scrap book of ideas and life” a New Diary for sure!

  2. I’ve been keeping journals since I was 8. I don’t see them as failures. I see them as friends that I visit and revisit when needed. Like you, Joy, they can be companionship or counselor or just a way to get my pen moving. After all these decades, it’s hard to think of them as abandoned projects because of the sheer weight of them. They are picture albums, just with a pen not shot with a polaroid.

  3. The New Diary was one of those books I had on my shelves that I never got around to reading. I don’t have it any more – it was a victim of the big book purge we went through when we moved to the city last year. Now I know I’ve got to read it! I’ll check the library – hopefully they’ll have a copy. I’m like Kathy – I’ve tried journaling so many times but can’t seem to stick with it. I like the sound of The New Diary – the free form method doesn’t sound constricting at all. Another method I’ve been wanting to try is the one that Linda Barry talks about in What It Is, but I hadn’t been certain I could keep up her format on a daily basis. It sounds like I could use it in a free form kind of diary, though!

  4. A very interesting post. The closest I came to keeping a diary was Morning Pages after reading The Artists Way. Fortunately, I was still in that habit when I had my car accident, because I’ve relied on them heavily to write my Memoir, “Impact: A Memoir of a Car Crash and PTSD”
    If anything intense happens to me again, I plan to keep a daily account of it, in case I ever want to write about it.

    Jane Ann
    http://www.janeannmclachlan.com

  5. Pingback:Table of Contents — October Memoir Challenge | Joy's Book Blog

  6. I really want to check this book out! My favorite journaling book that I have read so far is Leaving a Trace by Alexandra Johnson, but I am always on the lookout for more. Adding this one to my list for the library this week!

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