A longtime journaler, I am becoming a memoirist. Don’t forget to journal. I’ve found I can’t count on my memory. Handwritten words capture the moment, the feeling, the effect on one’s perspective, how you framed the thought in its original context. Later, you can make some sense of it all, use fragments of ideas, clarify word choices, edit, link to other similar thoughts, write that memoir. I love the insight this blogger brings to the subject. Write on!
On Twitter yesterday I saw someone ask if he can call himself a memoirist because he keeps journals. No, I wanted to say, but didn’t. I resist engaging in social media conversations with strangers (although I’m told that is the point of social media). Nothing proves Goethe’s adage, “The spoken word comes not back,” better than Twitter where every utterance is carved in cyberstone. What if I changed my mind? What if I got trolled? Anyway, he wasn’t asking me. And besides, what do I know?
I know that the word mémoire is French for memory and what we write in journals is not memory. It is the present preserved. We write in journals to explore, confess, deny, blame, examine, discuss. We write in journals so our thoughts are not—what’s the saying—lost to memory? Even when writing about something remembered, it is the present moment of remembering…
Inspirations from Wake and Sea 