Saturday, October 24, 2009

Chronicle Your Life: It Could Lead to a Novel




Dear Diary/My Life

As many young girls do, I kept a diary that I wrote in every single night before going to bed. Making my nightly diary entry was something that I really looked forward to as bedtime approached.

I had received one of those 5-year diaries as a holiday present at around age 12, and was immediately hooked on the idea of writing down my private thoughts and feelings. I especially liked that my diary had a lock on it to keep prying eyes from reading my most intimate feelings that I was not always comfortable sharing with others.

To be sure, there was not much room to write the days events in such a diary. That didn't sour my enthusiasm to make an entry however. I enjoyed the challenge of condensing the detailing of my day. After making the present day's entry,I would read the entries I had made previous years. I found it kinda "neat" to read them and remember what I was doing and how I felt on that same day, in different years. I even discovered times I had detailed an event thinking that what had happened was the end of the world, only to be reading it a year or so later, and realizing I was no longer even bothered by it.

I fell out of the habit of keeping a diary for a while when I became an adult and started to make my way in the world outside the walls of my bedroom, family home, and high school. I came back to it soon enough though with the grown up version of a teenagers dairy, the journal. Through the years, I have found that keeping a journal has served many purposes for me. I have recorded events that I never wanted to forget exactly how wonderful I felt when they happened. Journaling has helped me to sort out my feelings and work through some of the darkest times in my life as well. My journals could even lead to a novel or several: one day. Yours could too.

You might not think that your life is interesting enough that anyone else would want to read about it, much less buy a book inspired by your life. However, people find first-hand accounts of common and not-so-common situations of living, quite intriguing reads. Sometimes mere curiosity draws people to such personal chronicles,while others want to know they are not alone in having certain life experiences. For some writers there would be no greater accomplishment than if something they have lived through might offer someone else hope as they face a similar circumstance in their life. Perhaps your journal or multiple journals, could lead to a book that offers understanding and hope to someone who really needs it.

Whether your personal journal ever results in a publication for writer creds: and money, there is good reason to consider keeping one. A journal records happy times you want to remember always. Journaling can be therapeutic and even help you to know, understand, and love yourself more. A journal can be a keepsake, a legacy of you that generations of your family can read and know the person, and the times they lived in of the person who wrote it-You!

Include photographs with your journal entries whenever possible, to add pictorial documentation that will aid you in keenly recalling or better illustrating for others, those memories later.



Author: Julie Morris. Freelance writer and blogger, all rights reserved. Visit my website: http://thewritestation.yolasite.com/ Contact me: twsstaff@yahoo.com

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