March 4 2008, Sainte-Adèle
A few years ago I
enjoyed a visit to Europe more than I could tell you, especially
Spain. This morning I began reading
over what I had written in my journal while I was there, I think it’s
the first time I’m reading it.
I’ve had that
volume going for a long time, through several homes and voyages. I’ve
been saving it up, I almost never read what I’ve written in it. I
thought that way it will be like a little treasure chest; some day much
later when I’ve all but forgotten what I wrote, I can read it like a
book, it will be almost as though it were written by someone else, maybe
it has surprises and nuggets.
But this
morning as I was reading it I was so disappointed. I read the whole part
from Spain and every line I wrote
is terribly commonplace, superficial and ordinary. Even a superficial
reader would find it boring, s/he would give up after a page or two. It
is so far from being literature. It is
drivel.
Why is it so
bad? I think I might know the answer : it is because I was so happy and
inspired in Spain!
When I’m that
happy everything, almost every little detail I experience, seems richly
textured and significant and worthy of mention. I went to a cafe and
there were two people sitting at the next table! One of them was wearing
a hat! There were cigarette butts on the floor! The sky started to cloud
over!
When I’m that
happy my critical standards drop, they drop real bad. I don’t know the
difference between a good line of writing and a terrible one. My mind
babbles, my hand scribbles, and in the back in my mind, as I’m writing,
I’m thinking this is going to be good, because I’m inspired!
Big
mistake.
So what about
the opposite extreme? When I’m discouraged, when I’m sad, when I feel
depressed?
In that case I
usually don’t write at all, not a word. Forget it. Rather sit in
silence. Lay on my back on the bed, thinking but hardly knowing I’m
thinking.
You can’t
compare the literary quality of happy writing with that of not writing
at all, you can only compare writing with
writing.
But
occasionally when I’m down I do manage to muster a paragraph or two. And
later when I read that, how is it?
Sometimes it’s
quite interesting! Sometimes it digs deep, deeper than I usually go.
Sometimes something is understood or discovered. Or at least you can see
it’s making an effort to deal with something real, it’s working hard,
it’s trying.
Why? Because
the critical bar has been raised, it is raised way up. It takes a lot
just to get me to pick up the pen, to wearily open that journal. Takes a
lot of what? It takes a feeling that needs to be expressed, to get it
out of me, or to try to make sense of it. Or it takes a thought that I
think I should try to remember.
How to write
well in your diary? When you’re down, when you’re way down, try to
summon all your strength and lift up that hundred pound pen. If at the
end of just one little paragraph you can’t hold it up any more and drop
it from exhaustion, it is possible you may have a
paragraph.
And how about
now, am I writing happily or sadly? Well I was in a pretty good mood
until I started reading that stupid diary this
morning.