"What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something loose-knit and yet not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace anything, solemn, slight or beautiful, that comes into my mind. I should like it to resemble some deep old desk or capacious hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking them through. I should like to come back, after a year or two, and find that the collection had sorted itself and refined itself and coalesced, as such deposits so mysteriously do, into a mould, transparent enough to reflect the light of our life, and yet steady, tranquil compounds with the aloofness of a work of art. The main requisite, I think, on reading my old volumes, is not to play the part of a censor, but to write as the mood comes or of anything whatever; since I was curious to find how I went for things put in haphazard, and found the significance to lie where I never saw it at the time."
Beautiful. I love that piece by Virginia Woolf, and it's always nice to know that other people keep diaries.
ReplyDeleteI love it, too, and was so happy when I discovered it! And I agree; I end up feeling more inspired when I know that others also keep diaries.
ReplyDeleteI love keeping a journal. I write each morning (& sketch sometimes) while having coffee in bed. Do you know about the book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron & the practice of Morning Pages ?? xo Susan + gang
ReplyDeletehttp://paperartstudio.tripod.com/artistsway/id3.html
I think I had heard about the practice of Morning Pages somewhere and it's an idea that intrigues me! I'm just not sure if I could write that much every day!
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