I Love What I Write

I would like to profess that I keep an offline journal. I would call it a diary, save for the fact that diary sounds “girly”, and some of my guy friends might give me stick for that. As far as I know, I’m the only person I know who does it, though I believe I do know a few girls who might.

I do not believe any of my male friends even come close to recording their thoughts on paper, and most, if not all, would, as I’ve said, give me stick for doing it. So why am I admitting to something that might cause me embarrassment? Is it because I have no shame? Perhaps. But then again, if I didn’t admit it, I wouldn’t have been able to continue with this entry.

And like a professional webmaster, I’ll take the stick, if it means I can get to the carrot (I am vegetarian after all).

Writing in my Journal

I write in my journal on a weekly basis. What I write about range from the really personal (“I killed a man today, thank goodness it was only a dream”) to the for-public-release (the entry before this, To Strive and Appreciate, was adapted from one of my journal entries).

Reading my Journal

Craving something to read, yet not quite in the right frame of mind to do it (my mind was feeling a strange combination of sleepiness and impatience, which rendered most books unreadable; the only other book that might have satisfied me would have been a book of poems), I took out my journal and starting poring through previous entries.

Earliest Journal Entry

My earliest recorded entry was dated 11th November 2000. The first few pages have no paragraphs whatsoever, modelled after the journal the killer in the movie Seven wrote (which inspired me to keep a journal too, just in case I decided to follow in his footsteps and become one as well).

Strangely enough, it reads like some of my present day writings. I would have thought that my writings when I was 16 would be horribly immature, but besides the serial-killer-wannabe mindset that I had back then I haven’t changed really that much.

After reading the last paragraph I just wrote, I decided to re-read my first journal entry (the one in November); surely, I must have changed somewhat! How could I have remained static?

Thank god, some things have changed since then: I now use more interesting punctuation, including but not exclusive to colons, semi-colons, and parenthesis (which I read somewhere does not happen much if at all in the German language; the author of that work chided the other languages for using parenthesis, including English, Italian and French, as parenthesis are horribly indirect and beat-around-the bush, and lead thoughts to places other than the main text, causing a loss of concentration on the part of the reader. Why bother adding something that does not belong in the main text in the main text, right? If it has to be put in parenthesis, it isn’t necessary. If it isn’t necessary, don’t put it in. At least, that’s what he claims. I on the other hand, really love parenthesis. Not everything belongs in the main text. And though not absolutely necessary, words in parenthesis add feeling, creating an atmosphere or a train of thought that leads to something else, perhaps something else vital to the main text. I am quite sure that you have been led quite astray already, as this long text in parenthesis was actually partially meant to do, just to prove his point, which I quite agreed with, though I do not speak or write German. I also read somewhere about a book, called Absalom! Absalom!, by William Faulkner that had a few pages worth of parenthesised text and (horrors upon horrors!) parenthesised text within parentheses! Writing, with creative uses of punctuation, can create literary effects for literature similar to what creative cinematography can do for a movie: everything’s basically the same, but the framing of the words (or in cinema, the actors, props, stage, etc,.) help create feeling that traditional methods might not be able to emulate). My sentences are also longer, and I no longer ponder with words what other people are thinking about me, but what I’m thinking about other people thinking about me.

So, I have matured. But anyway, back to the main point.

I read through my entries, and realised that I love my writing. Is it just me, or is it something most writers feel as well? That one’s writings are some of the best writing one can read?

I’ve read through countless blogs, journals, forums and other places where people pour their thoughts out. But I still find my writing most agreeable.

If you’re a writer, I would like to hear your comments about this, that one prefers one’s own writing to others. If I had to hazard a reason why, I’d go with this: because one writes what one thinks, when reading one’s own writing it is like reading one’s own thoughts; which is like wiping one’s ass with silk: smooth, creamy, and really comfortable, though it doesn’t necessarily always get the job done.