Student Editor of the Month Feb 10 Missive 2

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By Yvette_Walker, on 11/02/2010

I've just invested in an old fashioned journal - one of those Bruce Chatwin moleskines no self-respecting scribbler can bear to be without - and I began to write in it today - the blog seems to demand random thoughts, the occasional joke, the half thought out, casual argument - it is the stand up medium - while the journal still has weight and depth and physical presence - it has been the medium of great writers, delusional writers, anonymous writers, persecuted writers -  I'm returning to using one after a long absence - do others still use a physical journal? I met the English/South African writer Richard Mason at the Perth Writer's Festival last year - for his work-in-progress he has abandoned his computer and is writing in a custom made journal. His journal is a bound book of a size somewhere between A4 and A3 - it has enough space in its margins that he can make detailed notes - and the joy for him is in the fact that nothing he writes is erased - he can see his whole writing process on the page in front of him - an old fashioned notion but he is sure this is the way to make the most of his writing process - to not rush to the editing stage but to let the broken words, the half-formed sentences have a life. My journal is not my novel, but even today I could feel the pull to edit, to censor, to not be wrong, or sound stupid (and I am the only one who is ever going to read my journal!) - in short, I could not relax - it was as if there were readers out there, lurking. 

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the journal vs the computer screen

Submitted by brooke davis on Mon, 15/02/2010 - 14:11.

Hi Yvette!

It’s so funny that you bring this up because I have spent (read: wasted!) a lot of time over the last couple of weeks thinking about this. Sometimes, when the words on the computer screen aren’t working for me, I take myself, my bike and my journal off somewhere, to some unvisited cafe, or a rarely visited beach, or perhaps just a seat somewhere, in the middle of the goings-on of life. There’s something so different about the process of physically writing words on a blank page as opposed to the process of typing on a computer screen. I find I write so incredibly differently, as if I am two distinctly different writers, albeit with a similar inability to write well on the same day! I am so much more careful with the physical blank page, I give it more thought, more time and more design; I let my thoughts compost more before I commit them to the page. With the computer screen, there is so much delete-and-whatever-comes-just-write-it-down-and-it-doesn’t-really-exist-anyway that the writing process – for me – is more haphazard. There’s a freeing element to it, yes, but there’s also a sense that it’s rushed.  Perhaps writing whatever pops into my head and then backtracking and revising isn’t always the best way of doing things? This is what I have learnt, and unlearn, and relearn at least a couple of times a week. Pace, digitalness, and the overwhelming need to retain a sense of patience in such a world, are three things that I am constantly working through and working to balance, not just in my writing life, but in the life that I live, breathe, eat, exercise, and enjoy things in (you know, that other life that we’re also supposed to be leading!).

 

 

journals

Submitted by barbarem on Mon, 15/02/2010 - 15:31.

I tell myself I love my journal, that when I write in it I feel liberated and totally free to express deepest thoughts. I may believe this one day and scribble along every day. Maybe, one day. Of course, indexing it can be a bit of a chore.

journals

Submitted by nkonyu on Fri, 19/02/2010 - 16:05.

I love journals; I suspect I collect them for the sense of promise.  In this journal, I'm going to write only brilliant, inventive things.  This invariably never happens.  Prose gives way to to-do lists, things to pick up from the shop, interesting contacts, library book numbers.  In short, all sorts of rubbish with nary a coherent thought in sight. 

The only journal I've been able to write in, properly write in, is my big A4, black covered, no lines, spiral journal.  In this I wrote my entire thesis (well, in about 11 of these).  In random order, in between others bits of flotsam and jetsom.  These journals for me had a sesne of occasion.  I didn't jot things down; when I turned up to the blank page, I was there to write, seriously write.  I realised something a few weeks ago.  I hadn't written in one of these journals for the whole of 2009.  I didn't even buy one that year.  It was too tied up with my thesis.  This shocked me as I had lived and breathed into these journals; a whole year without one was downright weird.  But I couldn't stomache it.

I bought one again recently.  I've started writing in it again.  An epigraph to my novel is the first piece of sustained writing there.  It feels like a positive thing.  But I had to go through it; the year of no journal.  I'm more than a little curious about where this one may lead.

 

 

Journals

Submitted by cacroker on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 15:54.

I am currently in hospital with WIFI access and a laptop but I have returned to my physical journal after some very rare/ random entries in the last year of my studies. Here  in this little book, I am liberated again. I do not write seriously just let the healing properties of 'writing/journalling' and making sense of my world  happen. On screen in cyberspace it is there for posterity and being a 'creative' type personality sometimes it is more prudent not to 'rave/rage' on electronic fora.

The next seemingly destined-to-happen thing occurred the other day. Last Xmas I read a review of The Unpublished Spike Milligan Box 18, but couldn't rationalize spending $65 on it (I know ridulously cheap for a hardback but hey I'm on stipend only and life necessities come first). However, on the way to hospital I asked my lift if I could stop at my local newsagent to use the ATM out front. Guess what was sitting in a pile on the specials table for $14.95...

I have been reading, thinking about and submerging myself in Spike's box of ideas, journal entries, diary notes, drawings and letters. It is fantastic and perfect for my own mood swings. I can model my own random verbal torrents and stick in my ticket stubs, paper napkin ideas and  even my tarot entries. No-one needs to see it, no-one needs to read it... I do not have to use it for the PhD. My journal is back again now, as my friend not as an exegetical/artefact methodological tool!

It is magic again... and purple (my current favorite healing colour).