A recent article in Poets and Writers showed samples of the journals of some well-known writers. I was fascinated to see their journals were more like travel journals than diaries—rich with sidebars and illustrations. Taking a look back at some of my own journal entries (strictly word ramblins about the weather, my inner mood, the world events going on around me), I decided to ‘revise’ one of them and find new ways to record my day or week.
I clumsily illustrated the weather (I’m no artist); I pasted in headlines from world events followed by my commentary; I changed the drone of my inner feelings dialogue to a conversation with myself. Some of it worked better than the rest, but the single reward was a fresh perspective—a way of reviewing my life in more than words.