But beware of that word ‘writing’. Just as some persons are nervous
when entering a drawing-room (or even a restaurant!), so some persons
are nervous when taking up a pen. All persons, as I have tried to show,
are nervous about the psychological effects of the written word, but
some persons--indeed many--are additionally nervous about the mere
business of writing the word. They begin to hanker, with awe, after
a mysterious ideal known as ‘correct style.’ They are actually under
the delusion that writing is essentially different from talking--a
secret trade process!--and they are not aware that he who says or
thinks interesting things can write interesting things, and that he who
can make himself understood in speech can make himself understood in
writing--if he goes the right way to work!
I have known people, especially the young, who could discourse on
themselves in the most attractive manner for hours, and yet who simply
could not discover in their heads sufficient material for a short
letter. They would bemoan: ‘I can’t think of anything to say.’ It was
true. And, of course, they could not think of anything to _say_,
the reason being that they were trying to think of something to
_write_, and very wrongly assuming that writing is necessarily
different from saying! Writing may be different from saying, but it
need not be different, and for the diarist it should not be different.
And, above all, it should not be superficially different. The
inexperienced, when they use ink, have a pestilent notion that saying
has to be translated or transmogrified into writing. They conceive an
idea in spoken words, and then they subconsciously or consciously ask
themselves: ‘I should say it like that--but how ought I to write it?’
They alter the forms of their sentences. They worry about grammar and
phrase-construction and even spelling. As for grammar and spelling, in
the greatest age of English literature neither subject was understood,
and no writer could be trusted either in spelling or in grammar.
To this day very few writers of genius are to be trusted either in
spelling or in grammar. As for phrase-construction, the phrase that
comes to your tongue is more likely to be well constructed than the
phrase which you bring forcibly into being at the point of your pen.
If you know enough grammar to talk comprehensibly, you know enough to
write comprehensibly, and you need not trouble about anything else; in
fact, you ought not to do so, and you must not. Formality in a diary is
a mistake. Write as you think, as you speak, and it may be given to you
to produce literature. But if while you are writing you remember that
there is such a thing as literature, you will assuredly never produce
literature.
This does not mean that you are entitled to write anyhow, without
thought and without effort. Not a bit. Good diaries are not achieved
thus. Although you may and should ignore the preoccupations of what I
will call, sarcastically, ‘literary composition,’ you must have always
before you the ideal of effectively getting your thought on to the
paper. You would, sooner or later, _say_ your thought effectively,
but in writing it down some travail is needed to imagine what the
perhaps unstudied spoken words would be. And also, the memory must
be fully and honestly exercised to recall the scene or the incident
described. By carelessness you run the risk of ‘leaving out the
interesting part.’ By being conscientious you ensure that the maximum
of interest is attained.
Lastly, it is necessary to conquer the human objection to hard labour
of any sort. It is not a paradox to assert that man often dislikes
the work which he likes. For myself, every day anew, I hate to start
work. You may end your day with the full knowledge that you have had
experiences that day worthy to go into the diary, which experiences
remain in your mind obstinately. And yet you hate to open the diary,
and even when you have opened it you hate to put your back into the
business of writing. You are tempted to write without reflection,
without order, and too briefly. To resist the temptation to be slack
and casual and second-rate involves constant effort. Diary-keeping
should be a pastime, but properly done it is also a task--like many
other pastimes. I have kept a diary for over twenty-one years,
and I know a little about it. I know more than a little about the
remorse--alas, futile!--which follows negligence. In diary-keeping
negligence cannot be repaired. That which is gone is gone beyond
return.