This Is Not a Journal Entry

I got my first journal when I was in elementary school. It was about the size of my hands and had a soft cover with pastel hearts all over it. A tiny lock kept the pages from falling open. Though I hid the key like it was buried treasure, a paperclip could have busted the thing. Inside, the lined pages were the colors of bubble gum, cotton candy, and mid-day sunshine. Even though I was only eight or nine at the time, it didn’t take me long to fill the journal’s pages.

I bought another journal after that, then many more. I wrote all the way through high school, spilling my secrets to those pages like they’d never tell (which, of course, they wouldn’t). I also made things up, stories that I pretended really happened to me or just straight up short stories. Not too long ago, I looked back at some of those entries and couldn’t decide if I should have laughed at myself or burned the journals out of embarrassment.

In college, I was too busy for journal writing. I wanted to graduate with two degrees, so when I wasn’t struggling through some organic chem problems, I was deep in a classic novel. I didn’t have time to write secrets, let alone stories (unless they were for one of my writing classes).

The only exception was the semester I lived in Paris. I took a journal with me and filled the pages, writing down everything I wanted to remember: the sight of the palm trees and a Ferris wheel in Nice, the smell of the Dublin street where someone stole my passport, the feel of the Mont-Saint-Michel’s wet sand between my toes, the taste of soupe à l’oignon from a café near the Seine. I kept track of my favorite Parisian bookstores, how many times I visited the Louvre, and where to find the best pain au chocolat. I wrote between the lines, but also filled the margins:

 

After Paris and college, I didn’t journal again…until last fall when I began this blog. Of course, a blog isn’t a journal—there are no deep secrets here—but I’m pretty honest (or so people have told me). I’ve explained what it’s like to lose a contest (here), see a writer friend succeed when I don’t (here), and get the best rejection email from an agent (sounds like an oxymoron, but here).

But there are some things I don’t share, things that I could share if this were a journal. I keep most everyone I mention here anonymous, except for contest hosts and a few others. Also to keep things anonymous, I write blog posts about big things when they happen, but I don’t publish them for weeks.

Sometimes, those are LONG weeks. One of the tough parts about not blogging big things is when I need advice (which, granted, a journal wouldn’t give anyway). I think other writers could help if I blogged about the issue, but it’s something that I really shouldn’t share, at least not yet. For those questions, I turn to my critique partners. They either have more experience than me or have read something I haven’t. I’ve never met them—that’s a hard thing to do when they live in Kansas, Pennsylvania, and Arkansas and I’m in Cincinnati—but I trust them like I’d trust a journal. They won’t share my secrets. I don’t share theirs.

Still, there are days where I miss writing in a journal. I don’t really have time for that—not with writing here, writing elsewhere, working, reading, revising, querying, CPing, and fitting in friends and family—but the next best thing is this blog. I like sharing the not-so-secret things. And I’m going to keep sharing them.