♋︎ AMID DEATH IN MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM ♋︎

Sometimes people buy expensive hardcover journals. They are bulky and heavy, and because they are fancy, you are compelled to write something good. Instead you should feel that you have permission to write the worst junk in the world and it would be okay. Give yourself a lot of space in which to explore writing. A cheap spiral notebook lets you feel that you can fill it quickly and afford another. Also, it is easy to carry. (I often buy notebook-size purses.) — Natalie Goldberg • Writing Down the Bones

Is this journal to be like all the others I have started? A large first entry, consisting of the incident which made me think my life exciting enough to keep a journal, followed by a series of entries gradually decreasing in size and culminating in a week of blank days. Inexperienced diary-writers make their first entry the largest. They come to the paper with a constipation of ideas–eager, impatient. The white paper acts as a laxative. A diarrhoea of words is the result. The richness of the flow is unnatural; it cannot be sustained. A diary must grow naturally–a flower, a cancer... — Nathanael West • The Dream Life of Balso Snell