With fewer social engagements over the last two years, diary-writing has developed into a deeper, more meaningful and reflective journalling experience for many. The self-confessed intermittent diarist and author Cathy Rentzenbrink enjoys writing about the minutiae of her own life …
I’ve been in love with other people’s diaries since reading Anne Frank’s when I was about the age she was when she got a red plaid notebook for her thirteenth birthday. It was 1942. Anne started off scribbling about school and friends and boys but just a few months later, she and her family had to hide from the Nazis in a secret annexe of an office building next to a canal in Amsterdam. She took her diary with her, confided her hopes and dreams and recorded the difficulties of keeping quiet and the frustrations of living too closely with others. It was a comfort. She said: “The finest thing of all is that I can at least write down what I think and feel otherwise I would suffocate completely.”
At around the same time, I was stuck into the Anne of Green Gables novels about another bookish girl who dreamed of becoming a writer. It was only as an adult that I discovered the diaries of Anne’s creator, LM Montgomery, who put the sunny side of herself into her fiction and used her journals to let off steam about the darker complexities of her fluctuating moods and life with her minister husband who didn’t like her being the centre of attention.
Virginia Woolf wrote her diaries quickly, at a “rapid haphazard gallop” but knew that if she stopped and took thought, they wouldn’t get written at all. She was a great observer, and I like reading her for all the social history; the end of the first world war, struggles with servants, going shopping, and the granular details of leasing houses and how literary journalism worked. Woolf wrote a lot about her dissatisfaction with her work, her fears that she was not good enough and would be mocked, that all her novels were just vapour or muddy water.
Let’s go further back in time to 1862 when Ida B Wells was born into slavery in Mississippi. Her parents died of yellow fever and she took responsibility for her family, becoming a teacher and a journalist and a civil rights activist and anti-lynching campaigner. Her Memphis diary was written during her early 20s when she was working out how to find her voice while navigating difficult landladies, misbehaving pupils and the young men who admired her.
Ida B Wells is inspirational but I find I don’t have to approve of the writer to enjoy their work, and I’ve an odd fondness for reading the diaries of people I would heartily dislike in real life. Duff Cooper, Chips Channon and Alan Clark are all ideologically repugnant, but I gobble up their lives of political machinations and philandering. They are all badly behaved, greedy, and gossipy, qualities which lead to a compelling read.
It is perhaps inevitable that as a keen reader of diaries, I write one of my own. I’ve been in and out of it since childhood but have only had a sustained habit since the summer of 2017 when I stopped drinking alcohol. I was often doing notable things before then but was usually too sozzled to capture them. Every year I’d make a resolution but I could never keep it up. Since being sober though I have written hundreds of thousands of words.
I like to do it first thing before engaging with the outside world or listening to any news. Virginia Woolf talked about not wasting the cream of her brain in the morning and I too feel like I am at my clearest and most perceptive at the start of the day. The precise nature of what I do depends on my mood. Sometimes I record my activities and reflect upon them. Often, I grumble and there is a lot of moaning about my domestic responsibilities. I think of this as a safety valve. Better off out than in, I say, as I complain on the page. If I pour my bad moods onto paper, I am less likely to indulge them in real life. I call this “emotional inventory” and try to be honest about all the things I am sad or angry about or frightened of. I will also write snatches of fiction, put down my dreams, and make lists of things to be grateful for, which does help me move positively into the rest of my day. Sometimes I write “Wouldn’t it be nice if…” and indulge in a little daydreaming.
The other thing I try to do now is write when bad stuff happens. I used to down tools when I was unhappy. My words would go AWOL and I would be unable to get anything down. Now, I still won’t want to, but I know that if I can just manage to get down a few lines, then I will feel better in the moment and that also my future self will be grateful because she will be interested. There is something magical in writing down sad or difficult things. Perhaps it is because we are accidentally getting a bit of distance. I know I will feel less overwhelmed if I can put a few of my swirling thoughts into my notebook.
I don’t ever worry about the quality of the writing and I don’t try to be interesting to anyone, not even myself. I can’t imagine them ever being read as that would put me off. I don’t know what will happen to them. I haven’t left any instructions in the event of my demise. I think they are probably too fragmented to make much sense and can’t imagine them being published. Which is rather the point; to have a private space to say whatever I like and escape from the need for praise and fear of criticism.
My biggest tip is to start small. Just aim for five or ten minutes worth of loose sentences, or fill a page or two of a notebook. I think it is easier to do it every day because you then build a habit. I find it easier to do a few minutes every day than half an hour once or twice a week. It will feel clunky at first but your brain will start to anticipate it. And I am always amazed at what can be done in five minutes if that is all there is. When I have less time, I don’t waste so much of it staring out of the window and chewing my pencil. I’d recommend a notebook as this is the most reliable way to make sure you don’t get distracted by your phone and accidentally end up wasting the cream of your morning brain on texts or emails!
So, will you give it a go? Go on. As soon as you wake up. Just take up a pen and give me five minutes starting with Last night I dreamt …
Perhaps it will become a habit that will grow and grow.
Write it all Down: How to Put Your Life on the Page by Cathy Rentzenbrink, Bluebird, €17.65 is out now.
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