During the first lockdown in France, many moons ago now, I started to keep a diary. It began as a record of our time in the Provence countryside where we had escaped to wait out the “confinement” with my family-in-law. I recorded the mundanity of the days that bled into one another, anchored by meal planning and family tensions that served as a distraction from the domestic duties.
For the most part, my diary was pretty dull and revealed little of what I was actually processing at the time, save for the great pleasure that the natural world offered, such as the sunrises that crept up over Les Alpilles when I woke too early, far from rested. I recorded the subtle changes as winter thawed into spring: the first flush of greenery, the arrival of weather that allowed for siestas in the sun, the appearance of strawberries at the village market in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. The strangeness of attending a village market while wearing a mask and shopping in single file was an anomaly then but, 10 months later, it’s the norm.
It’s hardly surprising that I gave up on the diary after just two months. A few weeks after we had returned to Paris, the neatly written records of daily life transformed into an incoherently scrawled to-do list, dominated mostly by my work. It sits on my desk today as evidence of something I have always suspected: that I am not a writer who writes for myself but rather for my editors.
In an era of over-sharing and the hyper-constructed self, when everything we do and say publicly can be picked apart, real authenticity is perhaps more challenging to land on than ever before. In truth, I feel painfully self-conscious when rereading my own voice and reflections. I can’t truly let go.
Throughout history, though, journals served as a method for writers to develop their technique and explore their subconscious, to gain a better understanding of self. This level of self-examination is reflected in the diaries of some of my favourite writers, such as Anaïs Nin and Sylvia Plath, whose journals I actually prefer to their creative endeavours. Both women began keeping diaries in their preteen years and produced a prolific amount of writing about their inner lives. Despite the lack of an audience, their commitment to the craft is truly astounding; the intimate access to their thoughts is humbling.
“The diary taught me that it is in the moments of emotional crisis that human beings reveal themselves most accurately,” Nin once said. She was fearless in her personal records, never shying away from her darkest thoughts, and would probably have found this year of forced remoteness – when we have been confronted with significant challenges – a time of excellent creative fodder. Great writers have understood that diaries serve not only a record but also a form of escapism. As Susan Sontag once wrote: “In the journal, I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself.”