Do you want to be a writer? Are you trying to hone your skills? Do you do it to make new friends, keep in touch with old ones, or just have your say?

If you include a link, be sure to put TARGET ="_top" in the URL so it will load outside the frame.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Answers

I read that entry you linked to, and the guy who wrote it comes across as a real jerk. So he wants to be a writer; that's fine. So he thinks other people who write journals aren't "real writers" and suck; that's fine, too. Why does it upset him so much that he feels the need to piss on other people's cornflakes about it?

Why do I write my journal? For two primary reasons:

1) Writing out my thoughts, feelings, and ideas often helps me to work through them and make some sense out of them. It helps me to interpret my own mind, and sometimes to clarify what my real feelings are about a particular subject.

2) I am a big exhibitionist. I want other people to know my thoughts and feelings too, because dammit, I think that they are important and if I don't share them with anyone before I die, they'll be lost, and that would be a great personal tragedy for me.

If that guy who wrote that entry thinks that makes me a bad writer, or someone who's just on a big ego trip, fine, he can think that. And I don't have to read his journal. And he doesn't have to read mine.

Sorry if I sound a little irritated about this, but if he really thinks that keeping online journals sucks so much, why does he write one himself? I mean, honestly.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

I've kept an online journal for over a year now, and what Jim wrote really got under my skin. Here's part of what I wrote to him in reply:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Keeping an online journal is the single most important factor in getting my writing started again. I've always had trouble keeping a writing schedule, and the idea of sitting down to tackle a large work terrified me. I've always considered myself an undisciplined writer, and figured there was no way I could handle facing a blank computer screen every day.

The journal makes me do that. Every day, whether I want to or not, I write a coherent piece on some subject or another. Whether it be an account of my day at work, mulling over some event from my past, or just thoughts about where I am in life, I churn out about 2,000 words every single day.

In doing so, I've learned that writing can be a joy. That the process is as important as the product, because if you don't enjoy the act of writing, you won't end up with a product to show for it.

Up until I started the journal, I had exactly one full-length script under my belt. Since then, I've completed another full-length play (a comissioned work), my first screenplay, and am busy working on my second.

It's the discipline of sitting down at this desk every single day, whether I want to or not, that keeps me able to write. You may think I'm wasting time on the journal, but for me, it's like a series of warm-up exercises.

When I look back at older entries, the growth I've achieved as a writer is so glaringly apparent that I simply can't agree with your assessment of journalling as a whole. I know you hold online journallers in utter disdain, but just because it doesn't work for you doesn't mean it doesn't work for anyonoe.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Quite honestly, journal-bashing has gotten to be a sport in itself. There's a certain air of, "It is not enough that I succeed. My enemies must also fail" to it. When I read about "real writers" who don't concern themselves with the fripperies of online journalling, yet feel it necessary to comment on other peoples' work, it bugs the shit out of me.

Then again, the only way to prove the naysayers wrong is to succeed. When Diane Patterson, Stee, Toni Causey, Tamar, or (dare I say it) I get produced, then perhaps the journal-bashers can stop waving their tiny fists in the air.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

I've been thinking about starting an online journal for quite a while, and I know damn well I'm not a good enough writer to get published. I don't see anything wrong with writing as a hobby, if it makes you happy.

On that note, anyone have any suggestions on how to go about starting one?

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

No, I don't have one, though I'm thinking about it. I'd do it to have my say, keep a journal generally, meet people. I've done zine writing which is a similar kind of thing - amateur writing done mainly for social reasons.

I'm similar to you, Beth - I am a clever writer, but I don't have any illusions that I could write a novel. I don't have any ideas and I don't have the motivation to do it. I feel fine about this. So many people I know have a similar lack of ideas or skill or motivation, but they want to write - or as my friend puts it, they want to have written.

I'm off to read the Valvis post, but it sounds like I'm going to agree with him. For some people, writing journals or other things primes the pump. For others, it drains them of whatever they might have had to say. Every writer has to find what works for them.

A friend who wants to write mysteries used to write zines thinking it would get him in practice to write or something like that. He eventually decided that if he wanted to write mysteries, he should write mysteries, not "get in practice" some other way. So far, he hasn't produced anything.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

I have been a long-time reader of several online journals, and I seriously started preparing to launch my own last year. I'm almost there -- I wanted to have several weeks of entries before I put it up.

I have kept a paper journal ever since I was a senior in high school, some 20 years ago. The main reason I do this isn't on Jim V's list. Writing things down allows me to take a step back from a situation and examine my reactions and those of the other people involved. If I am angry with someone and I write down the reasons why, it's much easier for me to either validate the emotion or become aware that I'm overreacting or reacting to something else entirely. Keeping a journal has made me a more emotionally aware person.

I think Jim also overlooks the sense of community that some online journals produce. Just looking through some of the forum topics, I can see that your readers run the age/size/sex gamut. In spite of our differences, we all have one thing in common -- we read Bad Hair Days. We are a community. Just look at the diet thread, for example -- there's a lot of good information and support there for anyone who reads it. And for the journals I read without a forum, there is still a sense of belonging -- of relating to someone on more than a superficial level. And I think that is a Good Thing.

And I wouldn't underestimate the value of a good laugh in an otherwise busy, overcrowded day. Pamie, Xeney, and the Mighty Kymm have brightened up more than one day for me.

A lot of my writing has to do with the death of my brother last year. It is something that is always there, either in the back or front of my mind, and it colors my writing. I hope that when I launch the journal and people start reading, they will know that if they have such a loss in their lives, they are not alone. Grief isolates you in ways you just can't anticipate until you've been there. I've been there, and I plan to write about it honestly. I hope that others will write to me and share their stories. It's another community worth fostering, I think.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Okay, I just read Jim's post and I do agree with a lot of it. But I don't understand his contempt for people who say writing is their hobby. Thank god some of us don't have any illusions about the publishability of our writing.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

I first stared my online journal (which will turn 3 years old in February! Yay!) for two reasons.

First one was that I was reading other journals and thinking 'hey! I want to respond to that in one of my own.' The second was that I wanted to hone my writing skills. The first is still going strong, the second one, well I don't know if I've honed anything but it is easier to set thoughts down.

justme.org

I keep it because I love the people who read me, I keep it because as I've gotten older I have found that my memory is getting progressively worse. I want to remember certain things. I keep it because I love keeping a journal. An Online Journal. I have an audience.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

I think Jim and I disagree about hobbyists for one simple reason: he says writing is too hard for anyone to do it as a hobby. Well, okay, maybe it's too hard for anyone to do it well as a hobby. I don't know. But I don't find writing, at least not the lazy way I do it, to be remotely difficult. It's far easier for me than speaking.

Anyway, so what if it's hard? Some of my favorite hobbies are difficult. That doesn't mean I should either pursue them professionally or give them up.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Well, my old animosity towards Jim has softened a lot in recent months, and I've even written to him a few times to say that I liked one or two of his entries. So this isn't meant to be Jim-bashing.

However, I find that I disagree with much of his latest. He is correct in some ways, I suppose, in saying that writing an online journal is unhelpful to an aspiring fiction or poetry writer. However, I don't think that every single one of us who writes an online journal does so in order to prepare for the Great American Novel.

(Actually, that's exactly what I started off doing, hypocrite that I am. And I'm still working on my novel...)

The realization that I've come to is that my own strength as a writer is observational, not fiction. In that respect, my journal is the perfect place to practice my craft. And if my writing there is weak, it's not because it's in a journal. That weakness is all mine.

I changed my mind, I'm not going to talk about my thoughts on Jim Valvis as a writer. I'll just disagree and get on with my life...

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

I've been keeping an online journal for a couple of months now. I don't want to be a writer but I enjoy writing the updates for my journal.

I went online for a couple of reasons a) a good friend moved to the States and my journal is a way for us to keep in touch and b)to hopefully meet some people I otherwise wouldn't have met. Since I started though, I'm finding it easier to write and I'm sorting my own thoughts out in my head a bit more by the act of putting them on 'paper'. I'm almost surprised by how much I enjoy it.

I think anyone who wants to keep a journal should do so and ignore the people who enjoy slinging mud like that. After does it really matter why anyone keeps a journal? I'm just glad that all the people I read keep one and put in the time and effort involved. I'm not about to start criticising why they keep one.

Just Stopping By
Caoimhe

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Jim's essay got up my nose, even though I agree with some of his points. What annoys me is his assumption that writing is some hallowed Great Calling, that if you're not going to give it your all, that if you don't prostrate yourself before the altar of The Craft, you'd better quit right now, ya goddamn amateur!

I've been a professional writer for 20 years now. I've published hundreds of book reviews, short stories, interviews, features and a young-adult biography. But what I really want to do is publish a novel, and I haven't done that yet. And right now, I've got a demanding day job and family, and I'm not trying too hard to write that novel. I spend time fooling around with web pages that do nothing to enhance my career or writing skills. Does that make me a dilletante? Even though I know better, I spend time beating myself up over that question. And I get the feeling that Jim Valvis might be all too happy to join in.

I enjoy a handful of online journals. I'm glad folks like Nigel and Diane and Jen and Beth and Al and Pammie feel a need to share their stories with me, whatever their motivations for doing so. I don't think they're chumps, and I don't think they're wasting their time or their talents. I've learned much from all of them.

On the other hand, I wish Rob Rummel-Hudson would sit his butt down, craft a simply query letter and send it off to a magazine or newspaper. He'd probably sell something, maybe not right away, but eventually, and for real, spendable money. He's the kind of guy who could write a funny, insightful classical music column that I would actually pay to read. As much as I love "The Book of Rob," I wish he would channel that some of that creative energy into "real" publishing credits.

My basic feeling, though, is, "If you want to keep a web journal, go ahead." Just don't let it eat your life. Everything in moderation, right?

With that thought, I recently inauguarated my own little column/journal/vanity project, "My 15 Minutes" (www.mberry.diaryland.com). It's still in the experimental stage, but it's a fun exercise. I give myself a quarter of a hour, no more, no less, to craft a coherent essay about any damn thing I want. So far, it's fun, at least for me. Maybe you'll like it. Maybe Jim Valvis will hate it or merely disdain it. We all do things for our own reasons, and who has the right to judge?

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Well, I read the Jim Valvis "essay", and as I understand it, the main theme is "you are wrong if you ain't doin' it MY WAY, loser!"

I cannot agree with any of it. I do keep a journal to improve my writing, and it works. The journal entry, it is the first thing I sit down to write. It acts as my warm up. With it, I stretch the story telling muscles, and it serves as a reminder for how to tell the story. It works by providing the boundary that the story I am telling must be true. It is no different than stretching my hamstrings vigourously before I run.

The best advice I ever got about writing was from Margaret Atwood. She said "write every day. it won't always be good. It won't always work. you might sometimes produce nothing more than a sentence, but the only thing that separates wannabe writers from writers is a good spell checker and producing some work every day." God I love her.

My online journal was part of my writing resume, as a sort of "look what I can do". I have sold several entries/ideas based in entries, and sold others on the idea of hiring me to write for them, based on what they saw in the journal, ie the mechanics of the work, etc. It has absolutely added something to the trade of writing for me.

But my biggest complaint is that writing as a hobby is a bad thing. That really annoys me. Writing is a serious profession, and can be a serious avocation, but anyone with a pen, a pad of paper, and a few minutes can write. Maybe their work is totally unsaleable, but is that the goal of writing? Is it only to create saleable work? And why is unsaleable work suddenly of little value to not only the public, but the person who created it.

I love that he was kind enough to tell me that I am wasting my time doing this, and that the only way to write is Jim Valvis' way. And I did get a big kick out of how to be a successful writer, I must start a journal exactly like his.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

I started my journal originally as a way for my friends and Mom back home to know what I was doing. It was a generic letter to all of them, keeping track of the Midwestern Girl in the Bay Area.

Then, after some time, I realized I had some readers. Yes! I love having other people I don't know read my journal. It feeds my ego, sure. I do consider my online journal my sloppiest writing, but I don't think it's all dreck. The fact that more than just my friends read it urges me to be more creative, more entertaining. And I experiment with different ways of entertaining. For awhile, I gave raw, personal accounts of my relationships, exploring the human experience in all its pain and trauma. I wasn't trying for shock value, I was trying to find out what people like to read about, what common experiences we all have and can relate to. These days, I've held my privacy more sacred, and have been trying to do more "theme centered" entries, hashing out not only what I think on certain aspects of our society and culture, but also how best to express my thoughts.

Yes, I am a writer. No, I'm not a very disciplined one when it comes to writing fiction, though that is what I want to do. I find I cannot force a story; they come, after weeks of thinking about characters and plot and making notes in my offline journal, in a flash of "inspiration" and almost the whole thing gets written in one night (or day, or, more likely, wee hours of the morning). I worry about ever writing "my novel" as I don't know if I can hold the whole thing inside my head the way I do with stories. But, I assume that I will manage to train myself to be more dilligent in my writing as I age. Ok, I do more than assume. I keep writing everyday...in my journal.

I think Jim is wrong to think that one cannot improve ones writing in a journal, especially an online one. For me, there's no greater inspiration or motivation to keep writing entertaining entries than having a daily set of two dozen people who read my words. I've lost sleep over some of my more "lame" entries, and I try never to write a "just checking in" if I can help it. I rejoice in every positive email responding to something I've put online, and it always spurs me on, makes me want to improve and keep writing. I don't write down every little boring occurance; I try to focus. Yes, I've turned bits of my journal into stories, and I expect to do that again and again. It's great material, one's life, and I think trashing those who try to keep track of it is a waste of time in and of itself.

But, the Web's big enough for every opinion, now, isn't it?

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

I keep Brittle Moments because I am diabetic and pregnant and there's little information available about what the expect. I wanted reassurance for myself. In addition, my site is a place to reassure my worried friends that I'm doing OK and has become a place to reassure a lot of other diabetic women that diabetics can have healthy babies. It isn't strictly about diabetes or pregnancy, but those are certainly recurring themes because that's what's in my life right now.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

It's interesting because I never was a published writer UNTIL I started a web journal. Before then I only got my plays seen on the stage if I paid the festival to do them.

Since starting Squishy I've been asked to write a weekly column for the paper, review teen angst dramas for mightybigtv.com, had one of my plays produced for an Equity showcase in New York, written for girliestyle, hissyfit, fametracker, sins, boobtoob and other webzines, I created a one person show from favorite entries that was seen by other online journalists (some from as far away as Los Angeles), I have been asked to speak at two web conferences (with payment), made priceless connections to the biz, and just today one of my entries was turned into an article on the front page of today's Life and Arts section. Every single one of these things happened because of Squishy.

So, for me, this journal has made it possible for me to be a published writer. I started it to see what I'd do. Through it I see what I can accomplish. I like Jim's writing quite a bit, but his absolutes are quite wrong. There's nothing more encouraging for your writing than an audience, and sitting in your room writing every day without anyone telling you if they like it can get discouraging. I sit in my room and write every day and people from all over the world tell me what they think. That's better than any writing group for me.

For ME. Jim doesn't know what's best for me. He knows what's best for him. So I wouldn't get all upset when you read what he wrote, because it's a piece that he wrote for himself about why he keeps a journal and how he feels about others. The tone I got from it is, "I don't HAVE to keep a journal like the rest of you do. I CHOOSE to have my journal, and that has made all the difference."

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Of course, there may be something about the way you keep your journal, as well, Pamie. You don't write the rambling stream of consciousness entries that most of us do. Your journal reads more like a column.

I'm not sure a rambling daily diary is likely to get anyone a job, no matter how good it is. I've kept three journals that each attracted a large audience, and not one of them has ever resulted in someone asking me to write for money. When I had my regular website, with more focused essays that appeared sporadically, I got two paying jobs writing a column, lots of zine writing gigs, and quite a few other offers that I didn't have time to accept.

So if anyone is hoping to follow Pamie's lead to paid writing jobs, that would be my advice: pretend you're writing a column. It can be a column about your life, as Pamie's is. But Jim's probably right about one thing: writing the way you write in the journal you keep under your bed isn't going to get you any offers.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

I keep an online journal as an exercise of self expression. In other words, taking the ideas running through my head and being able to express them in such a way that another person, besides myself, can understand. So sure, why wouldn't keeping an online journal improve your writing skills? If someone where to write thoughtfully with the intent to communicate, their writing could only get better, right? Ahem, I guess?

An online journal is also a way to use my creativity and to learn more about html. And I'm not going to lie, I really like to read about other people, their politics, their everyday happenings, thoughts, where they live. It's a great communication of ideas, and it's nice to discover that there are other people like yourself who share many things in common. Did I also mention that it was crazy fun?

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Of course, the problem with a piece like Jim's is that, since he didn't list journals and/or journal writers to illustrate his points, the more paranoid and insecure are quite free to assume that he MUST be talking about them - and thus become (needlessly)hurt, offended and miss his points entirely.

I don't know about any of you who were sent into a tizzy of defensiveness after reading his piece, but I personally do not consider Jim - nice guy and published writer though he is - to be an authority on journals, The Craft of Writing, reasons for writing personal narrative online or How to Become a Better Writer. He's found what works for him and what he believes to be true based on his experience. That anyone would automatically accept his word as Gospel and get desperately upset only proves his points.

As for whether journal-bashing has become a hobby in and of itself (and here I confess that I have and continue to do my own share of such), I don't think one can consider any genre of writing either viable or worthwhile unless it generates and sustains an active body of critics and criticism. Critics are a barometer of success and/or failure.

To, at last, answer the question: I write because I have always written. It was never a conscious decision - I AM a writer. Having increasingly drifted away from online writing over the past 18 months, I've set up a nice little penance for myself: another journal.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

I keep an online journal, and I write for a living.

There was a time in my life, just a few years ago, that I couldn't stop writing. My husband would go to bed, and I would be up all night writing. While that few hundred pages will never again make it out of the file, it represents a time in my life when I needed more than anything to express, in fiction, what I was experiencing. I was not a journal, nor did it represent what was going on at the time. It allowed me to express a loss - the loss of a potential. It's about someone who I always imagined myself to be but never will be. It's a great piece but hardly publishable. It's entertaining and embarrassing all at once.

I have always wanted, no needed, to write. I'm degreed in journalism. I earn a living at writing articles, investigative pieces and case studies. One of my hobbies is keeping an online journal. I am also writing a collection of short stories. They are three distinctively different disciplines, and each piece, regardless of its purpose, helps to hone my skills a little more. I become more expressive. My writing becomes tighter, and my language becomes more creative. To say that an online journal detracts me being a "serious" writer in any other arena is inaccurate. And to say that I lack the discipline or energy to do all three effectively is also inaccurate.

I plan to continue free-lancing writing. I plan to keep online journaling. I plan to sell my anthology of short stories.

And, I hope that no-one is discouraged by one man's opinion. I enjoy every online journal I read. I love hearing about your lives, your jobs and your friends. I always leave inspired in some way.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

One of the banner ads I made for my personal homepage says "100% journal free". The reason I felt the need to advertise it is because it's so rare to find a personal homepage that doesn't have a journal, and I wanted my site to be more of an exercise, something that made me (and my audience) think or explore. However, I'm an online journal junkie, and I do actually keep a hidden journal online, for my own benefit. I like being able to look at past entries and remember what I was thinking or feeling. I like having my life documented so that I don't forget, or that others don't forget after I'm gone, you know?

But in terms of journals as content for websites, I want to go beyond that. Find something new.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Oooh. I'm just the kind of person Jim's talking about (although I doubt he reads my journal.

I started my journal for a whole lot of reasons, but high among them is the fact that I'm a frustrated writer. In college, I was a dual-major in lit and creative writing, but somewhere along with way I got lost.

I'm bothered by the assertion that "journal writing, by its very nature, is sloppy." Journal writing, by its very nature, is frequent. It's personal. It's observational. It's not necessarily sloppy.

This is even more true about online journals than private ones. I'm guessing that most online journallers (or the good ones, at least) have read Diane's Why Web Journals Suck. We're aware of the fact we're writing for an audience. We think about the readability and entertainment value of our writing. We may be keeping our journals for personal reasons, but there's more to them than just brain vomit.

My journal is very similar to the nonfiction writing I did before I started it. The only difference now is that I write daily and my audience is larger. The quality might not be quite as high as when I just wrote individual essays, but it's also not slop. My biggest challenge in writing before the journal was searching for my voice. I'd start a piece and then not be able to pick up where I left off. Now I develop my writing voice every day.

As if that weren't enough, I'm making new friends, feeling like I'm a part of a community, and even becoming closer to friends I've known for years.

Waste of time

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

I got truncated. That last line should read:

Waste of time my ass!

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Well, for what it's worth:

- In our limited correspondence I've found I get along with Jim Valvis pretty well, and I think he's a sharp cookie most of the time;

- I sell maybe two or three pieces of writing a year, which makes me a little more than a dilettante and a little less than a pro, neither fish nor flesh nor fowl;

- I agreed with most of his essay, both the parts where I said, "Boy, I'm glad I don't do that" and the parts where I reluctantly admitted it was a fair cop;

- But - like a lot of other people, apparently - I disagreed about the idea that no one really writes as a hobby.

I firmly believe that I could sell more if I had the time and inclination. I don't. I enjoy writing it (for all the pain) and I enjoy having other people read it. I'm not willing to promote it, though - heck, I'm not even willing to make my fiction easy to find - so by that definition I'm a hobbyist.

Sounds fine to me.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Well, I keep a journal. And I read Jim's essay, and like so much Jim writes, I agree and disagree.

I absolutely agree with him that it is lousy training for great fiction writing. Totally different discipline.

I'm not so sure it's not good for other disciplines---column writing, for instance. I've had my entries reprinted in newspapers for instance, with permission. Of course, I have no ambitions to be a column writer, beyond what I'm doing....Pamie's is another journal that could easily be a column, in her case a humor column.

Nevertheless, for me, journal writing is much more memorable than most fiction on the web (including Jim's) and I remember say, Catherine of NAKED EYE talking about her choices with her HIV or Lynda talking about her marriage much more than I do any of Jim's or any other fictional chracters on the web (including the ones I've created).

The fact that it is real DOES make a difference. Hundreds of people logged in after my son died, not because it was necessarily so well written, but because they wanted the raw emotion I was experiencing...not as voyeurs, but friends sympathizing, I believe.

Autobiography has a strength just from being autobiography. ANGELA'S ASHES is well-written, but the fact that it is REAL gives it an extra punch. So too with the Diary of Anne Frank. Reality has a "flavor" all its own that gives dignity to even poorly-written pieces.

I write because I like the feedback, and yes, I do enjoy (despite what Jim said) remembering what I experienced at the moment, without the haze that ill memory might give on it. Certainly with Jamie's death, I wanted to hold onto every detail.

I also write because the writing that has moved ME the most on the Web has not been fanfic, has not been AFTERDINNER, or BREAKUP GIRL-- the writing that has moved me the most is someone relating the pain or joy they are going through, right as they experienced it. Meghan O'Hara, making me laugh my guts out even though her heart was breaking. Columbine talking about her crossdressing. Patrick with a new godlike lover. Mary of EASY WRITER talking about her monster-in- law. Tesserae talking about her early abuse, her multiples, and her love for the Bit. I remember them better than any other characters or writing that is strictly web-based, fictional or real.

I write because I enjoy what I've read from others, and others have shown that they enjoy reading what I've written about me and mine, also.

Also, it's cheaper than therapy. *Grin*

--Al of Nova Notes.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Funny, I wasn't aware that one man's, this man's opinion and view of journal writing should matter so much. But call me ignorant, as today was my first time to read 'Nothing, by God'. Should I know this man? Should it matter to me what he thinks of journal writing?

I have a "journal" but I don't call it a journal "per se". I started a site because I was curious about HTML, I kept it up because I found writing about the past to be healing and I enjoy it. I write when I feel like it and I write what I want to write - it's all for me which makes it utterly selfish and since it's online it must have some egotistical allure; I seem to like it this way.

I don't want to be a writer. I can write but I will never be a writer. I would hope that my writing would improve as with anything you work at and challenge yourself you would improve. If this were not true I think it is safe to say you are not doing something right. I've met interesting people who have taken the time to email me, which I hadn't expected but always seem to enjoy.

Maybe I should call it my 'Anthology'. "wink, wink"

'Stories from the East End '

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Jim Valvis always strikes me as an intelligent man with a chip on his shoulder and I can never understand why. Therefore I can't take what he says personally.

My personal take on the subject: I'm a writer. I've written more in the six months since starting my journal than in the year or two before it. And my writing has taken a quantum leap forward. Proof: I've been working with a producer team for the past few years on a particular script. I handed in a rewrite post OLJ and they had *no notes*. Unprecedented. They both commented that my writing had suddenly gotten startlingly better. The only difference? The OLJ. My screenplay writing flows better, it's more emotional, it's sharper.

And like Pamie and Kristen, I'm starting to reap the benefit another way: I just sold an entry of mine to Mothering Magazine. It's a first for me, but certainly not the last.

I think it's all about what you do with the journal. Do you just vent or quip or do you try to push yourself as a writer and a person every time you sit down? I don't think one is better, per se. But one does make for more growth as a writer, if that's your goal. As it seems to be for Jim, but he thinks there's only one way to get there. He's wrong, of course. There's never only one way to get anywhere.

Tamar visions and revisions

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Therapy.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

I've never read Jim's journal before, and wish I hadn't bothered to follow Beth's link, but I just *had* to see what y'all were talking about here (I do like forums, much more than online journals, in general).

Anyway, the guy does not come across as much of an authority on anyone's motives for doing anything, other than his own.

I kept a word-focused journal for about 8 months, but I got bored with writing about daily life in any detail, and I find most of the OLJ's I've read equally boring (or downright insufferable), so I don't read many (but I skim a few).

Now (since August) I keep more of a photojournal, which is what I wanted to do all along but didn't have the equipment until last summer. And yep, I tell people it's a hobby.

That's exactly what it is, and I mainly do it for myself and my friends - pretty much the opposite reason most people put up journal-type sites, I suppose (since so many try to remain anonymous and/or pitch fits if they find out people who know them in real life are reading their stuff).

To answer the other pars of the question -

No, I don't want to be a professional writer. No, I am not trying to hone my skills.

No, I don't do it to make new friends (I have made some through it, and that's nice, but it's not a goal). Yes, I partially do it to keep in touch with some old friends. Mainly I do it because it pleases me have the pictures up where I can easily access them myself - looking at pictures has always been much more connected to my emotions than reading accounts of what I or other people did on any given day. and it's fun to share them with old friends, new friends, and even total strangers who write to tell me how happy the pictures made them (like when I get emails from people who used to live in SF or N.Cal but had to move away and miss it a lot).

As for "having my say," the photojournal is not really the place for much ranting, and I don't do much on the weblog either - ranting might energize some people, but it doesn't energize me.

And no, I don't have ambitions to turn anything I do with my little personal website into a profession.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

I enjoy Jim's essays on writing, because he is passionate on the subject, always gives me plenty to think about, forces me to spend a bit of time determining where I fall in comparison to the mark he sets, and most of all, because his views come from such a different vantage point that most of the rest of us who keep journals that it is always refreshing.

None of which is to say I always agree with him, and that's of much less concern to me than whether or not he made me stop and think about the matter at all. I hope he continues to toss these out now and then!

I found myself agreeing with much of what he said, and disagreeing with much as well - and no surprise there. I've been disagreeing with Jim's spin while appreciating his words for a long time now.

My biggest dispute this go 'round is the notion of hobby not being serious. My shortest response to that is that, in terms of being published in one's lifetime (or even seeking it), Emily Dickenson was a hobbyist.

Many people do not devote much energy to their paid, public pursuits. Many people expend great amounts of energy on their hobbies with no desire at all in taking the pleasure out of it by making it a career. Something being a professional endeavour is really no marker for how important a place it has in a person's life.

That said, I think he is right for a lot of people when he says that a public journal can often be a way of deflecting oneself away from other writing pursuits that require most structure. Not everyone is looking for more.

At times, I've wanted my journal to be a place to improve my writing skills - and in that, it has mostly been a failure. I continue to be someone who 'use to' write poetry, who 'used to' write fiction, who, for 2 years 'use to' not only write, but edit an astronomy newsletter.

Now, I gripe about my day, examine my reactions to things that brush up against me and in terms of writing, I've gotten considerably lazy.

The journal is still a success for me, though, because what I needed out of it wasn't just to bone up on the cleverly turned phrase, but to learn to hear my own thoughts. To notice the patterns of my life so that I could learn to respond rather than simply react.

The journal may not be what it was when I was focusing more closely on it - but my life, the choices I am able to make and the possibilities I see ahead have expanded by lightyears. My ability to express myself to those around me in terms of explaining what my goals and desires and requirements has also opened up for me.

And yes, I do see that as a direct result of taking a little time each day to just note the flow of the hours and hear my own responses to them.

Maybe it doesn't work for everyone, and maybe not everyone needs that kind of kickstart to do that - but I did, and do, and it works for me.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

i started keeping an online journal last april. mainly i do it because i'm incredibly forgetful, and i like the idea of having a record of things i've done and the way i felt about it at the time. i've tried keeping offline journals in the past, but inevitably they don't last longer than a month or two. putting it on the web encourages me to do it on a semi-regular basis (thus proving that i'm a huge geek). there's a trade-off, of course; my journal isn't nearly as frank and open as it would be if it were offline.

i skimmed a bit of jim's essay, but it didn't really bother me that much. i have no intentions of ever being a writer, and i don't think that keeping a journal will really help my writing skills. certainly part of doing an online journal is ego, but i don't really know who reads my journal aside from a few friends and family members, and i don't make an effort to publicize it or anything.

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

Okay, so I keep an online journal. Actually, I've kept journals in one form or another since as long ago as I can remember. I don't do it because I think that it's going to make me a better writer. I don't do it because I think that it's the hip thing to do. I do it for me, because sometimes it helps just to get things down, to write it out. I do it because it makes me feel better. The fact that people are reading is kind of incidental, because I don't really check my stats or anything. Yeah, I have a sitemeter, but really, if I check it twice a month, tha's a good months. I don't really care who's reading and who isn't.

Maybe I'm weird.
-Meghan

-- Anonymous, January 21, 2000

I write to express my mundane, serious or goofy thoughts and I'm thrilled that my ability to do so (through words) has improved. I'm also one of those people who want endless records for myself, and later, and posterity. I want to know, twenty years from now, what I was thinking or doing today.

But, I do agree completely that writing a journal will not help you write better fiction or create poetry. If you want to write fiction, write fiction. I learned this through experience.

Write a journal for a few years and assume the short stories will pour out until, eventually, a novel drops out of your ear? Not hardly. I was pretty shocked when I had to admit this.

Not to say that you couldn't do both, you just have to practice and work at what you really want to write. (Which, of course, means knowing what that is.)

So, if writing something other than a journal has been your burning desire, you'll probably want to do that as well.

-- Anonymous, January 22, 2000

Having read Mr Valvis' comments, and those of the posters before me, here are a few of my own

I've been keeping a journal/diary/whatever in some form or another since early 1990, on and off. I took a complete break from it from May '93 to May '95. Only in the last three weeks have I taken it online, though (at the link given below). I also write other things, stories and essays, and I don't think they've been harmed by my writing a journal as well. I strike a balance between the two and write both things as and when I feel like it.

As for the idea that journalling sucks the creative energy required for other things out of you, I've seen a similar accusation levelled specifically at my favourite author HP Lovecraft, namely that if Lovecraft hadn't written the thousands of letters that he did, he might've found the time and energy to write more than the 100-odd stories that he wrote. Which may be true, but then we wouldn't have the letters, either, which are more interesting even than the stories. Apart from which, those making the accusation are totally out of line doing so. As Mr Valvis says, he's not our daddy, and therefore this gives him no right to tell the rest of us what to do with our time. If I want to write a journal, I will damn well do so, and if not, then I won't. But I won't stop just because HE tells me not to.

I think that the desire to keep a journal for one's own interest and amusement is pretty much the best possible reason for doing so, and there's nothing Valvis can say that'll make me think otherwise. Some people may have what they consider to be complex reasons (drive for self-expression, wanton exhibitionism, therapeutic value, memory aid, etc.) for keeping a journal, but I think they all boil down to one thing: people keep journals because they really, really want to, and because they enjoy it. If other people should derive similar interest and amusement from someone else's journal, all fine and well. But I think the author's own personal pleasure in keeping the thing is the only justification necessary. Certainly there are online journals I don't find interesting myself, but if they please their authors then that's OK. I don't need to read them, and neither does Jim Valvis.

http://www.geocities.com/jgwr

-- Anonymous, January 22, 2000

I started keeping an online journal (from sans to serif) because I had kicked my Usenet habit but wanted a place to publicly share my thoughts. And beside, one of my best friends had a really interesting one (One-Woman Focus Group) which I wanted to emulate.

I kept doing it because I like having something that keeps me writing regularly, which I think is good practice for when I do give in to fiction urges. Also, it really helps me understand what is going on in my own life when I need to explain it to someone else; it's almost as good as therapy.

Sure, these are pretty selfish reasons. But the thing is, no one is forced to *read* an online journal, so even if it's boring or badly written or whatever, it's not really being inflicted on anyone but myself.

-- Anonymous, January 22, 2000

I write; I've published. I keep an online journal. I love having a unique place to express essay-type ideas without pressure to publish.

Without repeating what everyone has said above, I'm struck by the fact that there are quite a few published writers who kept journals. I know someone here already mentioned Lovecraft's letters, and I'm thinking of Eurdoa Welty, Anne LaMott, John Gardner... I know there are more, but am not where I can research it today. Do any of you remember / know of other authors who kept a journal? (I know there will be lots of obvious ones I've left out -- thanks.)

-- Anonymous, January 22, 2000

i initially started my on-line journal as a way to keep long distance family and friends up-to-date on what was going on in my life. soon, however, i became frustrated. i had to be careful what i wrote so that i didn't hurt any feelings, or worry people when i was depressed. being upbeat and positive all the time is hard enough without having to be that way in my journal as well. moving it freed me up to say what i wanted, and it has helped so much. i agree with what al said above: it's cheaper than therapy! i didn't even intend for it to become therapy, but it did. i have recently been able to put to rest a couple issues which had been keeping me down emotionally for several years simply by writing about them. that's not to say that i'm a totally happy person now; i still have a lot of issues left to deal with. but i'm better off for having written them. i was never able to keep a paper journal - still can't! so, i also want my journal to be a record of my (almost) daily life. it will be interesting to look back in a few years or so and see where i was in my life, what i was thinking and feeling, and how much i've (hopefully) changed. as for the whole "do you want to be a writer" thing, well, yes, at one time i did aspire to be a writer. that doesn't have anything to do with this journal. however, writing in it nearly everyday has got my creative juices flowing, and i've been dabbling a bit in poetry and digging up some old, half written stories. i doubt anything will come of it, but if i do manage to finish something, what the hell, maybe i'll send it off somewhere and see what happens!

-- Anonymous, January 22, 2000

Re: Toni's question on other writers who have kept a journal, I must point out one of my favourites : May Sarton. I've just recently delved into the world of her poetry (which is truly remarkable craft), but I discovered her through her journals. They are amazing, and so is she -- I think her journals enhance her work rather than detract from

-- Anonymous, January 22, 2000

Jim's essay really hit me in the gut. I am a writer who has been published and now I keep an online journal (perforatedlines.com). Am I killing any chances of ever being published again?

Stay tuned. I'll let you know.

Meanwhile. Every instinct in my being has drawn me to this machine, to this new moment in communication that has never been seen before on this planet. What writer could resist the chance to end-around the timidity of the editors, the sour rapaciousness of the agents we all know and love?

It's a chance, folks. A chance to sing directly to an audience with a free microphone hooked up to the world. It's a chance to get direct feedback. It's a chance to live or die on the strength of your talent, or lack of it.

What sane writer wouldn't want to know how he or she really sounds?

Jim seems to think that the important agents, editors, and publishers are going to be tougher on your poor delicate words than the unwashed pajamied mass that reads you online. To that I say: Ha!

I both work with and employ many of the people he's hoping to impress. He's describing a world that he doesn't yet understand. Worse, he's giving advice from too low a vantage point -- he's telling people to quit because all he sees ahead are brambles and pitfalls. I can describe a vastly different landscape. I can tell you that the one and only way to fail is to quit.

Journals are many things to many people. Jim's journal obviously means something to Jim. He's bent the traditional term and made his journal a place to post short stories. Is Jim in the wrong community? Maybe. But the very flexibility which he seems to dislike about journals is the very reason he must feel comfortable keeping one himself.

It's just odd he would use his journal to bash the journal. W

-- Anonymous, January 22, 2000

I haven't read Jim's essay and I'm not going to so this isn't in response to it.

Writing First Person Particular has opened my life up in more ways than I can count, and being more aware of what is real, interesting writing is only one of them. When I read my old fiction, I wince at the contrived, "writerly" tone of them, the pompous phrasing, the lack of rhythm and clarity. I can now recognize those failings because I've been writing everyday for a year and a half.

This new knowledge may or may not translate into writing fiction or articles, but that is no one else's business but my own. Meanwhile, I enjoy writing every day, I love meeting people through the journal and I get a great deal of pleasure knowing that several hundred people read what I write, good or bad, every day.

It is all because I found Beth's journal Dear Jackie Robinson.

-- Anonymous, January 22, 2000

I just came across this, and I like it... from The Right to Write, by Julia Cameron:

"What if there were no such thing as a writer? What if everyone simply wrote? What if there were no 'being a real writer' to aspire to? What if writing were simply about the act of writing?

...What if writing were approached like white-water rafting? Something to try just for the fact of having tried it, for the spills and chills of having gone through the rapids of the creative process. What if we allowed ourselves to be amateurs (from the Latin verb amare, 'to love'). If we could just get over auditioning to be respected at this aspect, a great many people might love writing...

When people undertake writing, it is often not with the agenda of writing but with the agenda of 'becoming a writer.' We have an incredible amount of mystery, mystique, and pure bunk around exactly what that phrase means."

-- Anonymous, January 22, 2000

I started writing an online journal because I saw a few out there nd I liked what I saw.

So I jumped on the bandwagon with a heapload of expectations -- I want contact and discussion and most of all, to be a part of a community.

But a lot of that didn't happen ... or didn't happen until I stoped trying so hard to be a part of something and just concentrated on writing when and what I wanted to write.

Writing online is a synthesis for me. It let's me capture a snapshot of the thoughts that have crossed my mind during the day. It's not always a complete image, but it usually captures the essence of a thought or two that were important to me.

Sometimes I use the space to explore other kinds of writing -- stories, poetry, and even "laundry list" entries.

I'm telling a story with the journal you see -- a story to myself and anyone else who happens upon it. It's my story, in all of its minute pieces.

A puzzle if you wish ... an incomplete portrait ...

I started to be a part of something. I continue because in many ways this is the story that is nearest and dearest to me -- my story, all except when touched by the stories of others.

-- Anonymous, January 23, 2000

Someone please pan my journal so more people will read me! I say lots of evil things! (Comments to Jim's entry are in my 16 Jan entry. Keep 911 on your speed dial!)

-- Anonymous, January 23, 2000

This time, without the typo.

-- Anonymous, January 23, 2000

Actually, now that I've had some time to digest most of this forum (and take a shower), I must say, I think that it's only a matter of time before someone with an OLJ says something that has a major influence on culture. Jim may know more about writing than I do, but in terms of diffusing innovation into the mainstream, I think he's making a wrong prediction. If James Joyce had unleashed Ulysses upon the public 25 years earlier, before Picasso painted Les Demoiselles D'Avignon, before Einstein introduced the idea of time as a function of velocity, before Chaplin experimented with filming scenes backwards, before George Herriman started drawing Krazy Kat comics, before Freud's model of the libido interacting with the Ego, before Jung's interpretation of personality types, how open would people have been to a book covering Leo Bloom's bodily functions?

After WWII, America saw a surplus of GI's turn into bikers, beat poets, and painters. If you've got one guy dripping paint on a canvas, and you call him a nut. If you've got a guy doing drips, a guy doing black tumors, and a guy doing colored rectangles, you call it a movement and give it a name. Movements make anything new easier to swallow. Instead of a surplus of resources (GI's), any OLJ movement will be spurred on by its wide media accessibility. Historically, innovations take what's described as an s-shaped curve. I remeber how people in New Jersey complained when Bruce Springsteen had a huge national hit with Born in the USA, when we were all following him from 9 years before with his breakthrough album, Born to Run. The prior 9 years were the bottom part of the S, and the spike in national popularity became the stem part of the S.

I think, if Pamie can hold out, at most, another 3 years online, there's going to be a couple of major magazine articles asking why are so many people reading Squishy? Then she's going to see her readership spike up astronomically, to where she's one of the most widely read columnists in America. She's the right age and education to experiment with media presentation. Everyone likes her and she's weird enough to be distinct. (Of course, if she accepts any offers to write for any newspapers, instead of being recognized first among a movement, she will be jumping into competion among many, plus she'll have to work for an editor, instead of garnering huge corporate sponsorship, and hiring a proofreader.)

Or, maybe it will be Stee that gets the national magazine coverage. Or, maybe Howard Stern will go online, and Jim will have the last laugh, as anyone who isn't a Stern fan will be turned off of OLJ's, much like the superhero genre has ruined comic books for most people. Hey, it's just an idea.

-- Anonymous, January 23, 2000

Damn, now that I've finished my thoughts, I realized that the best I can hope for is hanger-onner, and the competition is already steep for that. I guess Jim's right. I am wasting my time.

-- Anonymous, January 23, 2000

Haven't read Jim's thingie. Don't feel like it.

I started my journal so I'd have a forum in which to post rants, little tidbits, etc., where other people might read them. I wanted to decrease my reliance on forums and mailing lists for outlets, and have another way to 'tell someone about that neat thing I saw/read/etc'. I want to remember things better, I want to record things more often than I have been in my offline journal. I wanted a part of my webpage that lends itself to quick, painless regular updates.

I do want to be a writer (not sure if I want it enough to go for it), but that has nothing to do with my journal. I don't write my best online, by any stretch of the imagination. I don't think what I write in my journal will ever help me secure a writing job, or write a novel, or anything else, except possibly as a source of future subject matter.

After a few entries, I've found a few interesting quirks in my online journal-writing. Since almost everyone who reads is a friend of mine, and I don't know when someone else will find the page, I'm having to craft my words more carefully than I'd hoped. This may end up being a good thing, because I have to find different subjects to discuss and different ways in which to say things than I would otherwise. It may end up honing my skills, although that is far from the point. It's a hobby, it's a way to express myself, a memory aid, and a way to interact with friends. Eventually I'd like it to be interesting to read, but one thing at a time, right?

-- Anonymous, January 23, 2000

hi, no, i don't keep an online journal but i fantasize about it madly. i read buckets of online journals and i have never found a better way to feel part of a society that doesn't make me want to mount an anti-tank gun on the hood of my car. sounds screwy, but it's true. i want to start a journal, but my worry is that it will suck eggs. my reasons for wanting to start one include the desire to actually participate instead of fantasizing, to learn to write, and to be connected with other people-to expand my universe.

you guys rule. truly.

-susan (sascott@mediaone.net)

-- Anonymous, January 23, 2000

Here are two articles from yesterday's Guardian here in Britain, about the possibilities of literature on the net, which might be interesting. One of them refers to online journals specifically, albeit only in passing.

Scroll to the future

Jewels of the cyber-slushpile

-- Anonymous, January 23, 2000

What a huge response. Which is odd as Jim's "journal" sucks. What topic will be next? Spelling lessons from Dan Quale? Move on.

-- Anonymous, January 23, 2000

I wouldn't say that I 'keep' my journal, nor would I say that it 'keeps' me. We keep our distance from each other, and help each other out now and then.

It doesn't judge my life on its level of coherence and entertainment, and I don't judge it for these criteria either.

Though I have done things, and probably will do things, that I would not otherwise do in order to impress it. I only want its love.

Salmon Mire

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2000

I think all journals are worth writing. Every one is a letter to an author's future self that illuminates where that past self was. There isn't a single journal on the net that I would discourage the author from writing.

Whether all journals are worth *reading* is another question entirely, of course.

I enjoy writing and I hate writing for money. As soon as money changes hands, the one doing the handing-off has some say in what the recipient does. My wednet.com column was good money, but it wasn't what I would have written had I been unfettered by the whims of my editor and publisher. I had more fun posting gag articles to alt.wedding about how a couple I knew celebrated their union with a live squirrel release. (Man, I think I'm going to slip over to deja.com and look that one up right now. It's the only thing I've ever written where I actually laughed during the process of writing. Of course no one would ever pay me, even in expired cereal coupons, to write something so stupid.) Nearly every work for which I've been paid has been a compromise between me and someone else; giving it away is the only thing that permits me to speak in a voice that is wholly my own. I love personal websites, knowing that each word and image and aspect of the layout has been chosen by *one* person -- no other written medium can boast this. Certainly some self-censorship happens, but self-imposed editing chafes far less than some moron replacing all your carefully chosen big words with smaller ones, or inserting paragraph breaks where they don't belong just to break up the space better visually.

Other people could really use an editor, of course, but not me, for I sprang perfectly formed from the head of Zeus.

So that's why I think writing for nothing shouldn't be disparaged. (I got the Wednet job based on the strength of some carefully-selected freebie advice I'd dished out on Usenet, by the way, and my later gig at the Independent Review was offered to me based on a book-review page on my old website that was just me blathering to be blathering.) I think the journal format is important because readers tend to be more emotionally involved in stories that are ongoing. The shows that are on today that people tend to get most passionate about -- "ER", "Buffy", and "The X-Files", to name a few -- are those where relationships change from week to week and people can be seen growing emotionally. Shows in which every episode is self-contained tend not to inspire the same investment from the viewer. There is little reason to watch multiple episodes of "Leave it to Beaver" or "The Dukes of Hazzard." Beav's going to get in trouble but dad will set him straight, and Roscoe will pitch his patrol car into a ditch. Beav and Roscoe don't change.

Okay, I just got up to answer the phone, came back, and forgot where exactly I was going with that, so I'll just have to hope you can decipher my point, whatever it was. Um, I didn't read the Jim Valvis article because I've already got a good idea of what he thinks about online journalers who aren't Jim Valvis. It did spark some interesting commentary here, though.

I can't believe there's a cool Seattle journaler that I've never heard of before. I think I'll go gorge on some archives now.

And here's some extra blah blah blah in case my post gets truncated, which you can ignore: Last time I went to Value Village I found a pair of CK jeans in exactly my new, improved size so I bought them without trying them on but when I got home I found that they had been owned by some short girl who had taken them up an inch or so meaning I can only wear them with ballet flats and I don't understand why anyone would do that when CK jeans DO come in different lengths and she C

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2000

Hey, it's time for a Springer-esque Final Thought:

If keeping a web journal [well, except for a web journal just exactly precisely like JV's] doesn't make you a better writer, does writing page after page about how much said web journals could suck the chrome of a boathook make you a better writer?

I invite all of you to hang out in any photography forum [Usenet or otherwise], by the way. If you think that people who write for cash get worked into a lather about those who scribble for fun, you should see what pro photographers think of hobbyists. They wish we were all dead and by god if they hadn't just blown all their cash on this Mamiya lens-dusting kit they'd spend it on a big box of hand grenades and do the job themselves. The reason for their bile is simple: no one will buy what they have to sell if those of us who do it for fun, for a lark, for art's sake, are producing work that is comparable or superior for free. Someone with a truly superior, professional-grade product isn't threatened by amateur work. Dale Chihuly doesn't go on "Northwest Afternoon" to rant about stupid housewives who think they can blow their own glass bowls. Marie Callendar doesn't sputter that baking your own pies is a fucking waste of time.

Blah blah blah garbage for greenspun to truncate la di da pie a la mode puttin on

-- Anonymous, January 24, 2000

So I sit there, and ponder, and hastily explain my own position on the thing, and we all come to this forum, and talk about our positions (very eloquently), and then stee, in one blow of brilliant parody, makes further talk irrelevant. "I did not go through the personal hell that has been my last 14 years just so a bunch of amateurs can go around fucking and actually having a good time..."

You can try, Beth, but I live closer to him. I'm gonna marry him first.

-- Anonymous, January 25, 2000

You realise Stee now has numerous people fighting *ahem* I mean discussing who should marry him? That's a fairly impressive response to a journal entry. Does it matter why he's (or any of the other journallers' are) writing?

-- Anonymous, January 25, 2000

This reminds me of a friend that owned a coffeehouse and a bookstore, was an independent publisher and an independent filmaker, and his words of wisdom:

"Hey, they're only words. Relax."

Second Avenue Fandango

-- Anonymous, January 25, 2000

I've been keeping a journal for many years, online and off - and I'd like to make the distinction between the two to address the question of how it affects my creative writing.

Writing on paper never drained my creative energy. I wrote a novel, short stories, OpEd and poetry while writing diligently in my diary. It even helped me to write poetry: the process of exploring my emotions sometimes became the jumping off point for a poem on the next page. It was also a refreshing break, sometimes, from long fiction, a way to work through a block or rethink an idea.

Writing online, however, between the period of Jan 97 and June 98, had a negative impact on my output. Not the process of writing, but rather the scene surrounding it. Reading dozens of journals a day, trying to keep up with email, designing and redesigning my site, all these activities were vampiric. After a while it affected the quality of my journal as well. I was so caught up in metajournalling I became lost in a labyrinth of my own creation, and forgot my purpose. When I read some of those entries now, they're very nearly worthless.

Then a suitably dramatic thing happened. I moved to the Rocky Mountains, a backwoods cabin with no computer access. I started writing on paper again. And I remembered why I kept a journal in the first place: catharsis, self-analysis, emotional growth, self- actualization. When I emerged from my unintended retreat I started posting online again but I didn't forget the lesson, nor the reasons for putting it online: education, growth and support. And, not having net access at home meant there simply isn't opportunity to get sucked down again (despite my posting here!). So I continue to write the way I always intended to. When I posted my first journal entry online I declared I would write the way I do on paper, and although I experienced a detour I'm refocused and experiencing what's positive about being online while being more aware, and wary, of the traps.

As for fiction, in the past week I've written a short story and a poem, undisturbed by the spectre of my journal.

Finally, to address the contention that journals are sloppy, uninteresting, and unpublishable, I have two names to drop: Evelyn Lau and Anais Nin.

-- Anonymous, January 25, 2000

Evelyn LAU. OH for the love of all that is good and merciful!

What a big load of crap that woman is full of. Granted, there are always two sides to every story, but dear Evvie's is so far from the truth she might as well be filed under science fiction.

Please don't sully anais nin's name by mentioning it in the same sentence. I beg you.

-- Anonymous, January 27, 2000

There seems to be some kind of ongoing whoop-de-doo in the journaling community. I was not sure exactly what it was, because I only subscribe to one journaling list, and it evidently wasn't the one where this whoop-de-doo was being discussed in-depth. However, some of the journals I read on a daily basis have mentioned it in passing. So, being the good little stick my nose where it doesn't belong type of person y'all KNOW I am, I went a-huntin' for the basis of the whoop-de-doo.

Well, I found it. I expected to be annoyed, I expected to get pissed off, I expected (and yes, I HOPED) to be made to have an aneurysm. Hmph...none of that happened.

I tried. Really, I tried to get pissed off by the comments that Mr. Vlavis made. I tried to feel offended. I tried to be self-righteous.

PFFT...

His opinions mean absolutely nothing to me Jim Valvis doesn't know me. He doesn't know the reasons I do what I do. He is not an authority on anything except for what he himself does. Bzzztt...that's it, thanks for playing. Buh-bye.

I write for me. I like the thought that there are people out there who enjoy what I write, but the thoughts that I put here are for me...for myself. I write the same style on-line as I did 15 years ago. If I were never to get another "hit", it wouldn't make a bit of difference to me. But...but...I HAVE gotten hits, and I've met people who are interested in the same things that I am, who are going through the same things that I have, or who sometimes make me laugh so hard I spit coffee into my keyboard. And I treasure those people, and I think my life is richer for knowing them, even the little bit that I do. And that is important to me even if I NEVER get another "hit".

And yes, I consider myself a writer. Not a WRITER, mind you, or even a Writer. Just a writer. I have ALWAYS been a writer. A journaller since the age of ten or so. A story writer since the age of maybe fourteen. I write speculative fiction. Horror, if you like that better. But I read...oh, I READ:

horror, science fiction, biographies, true crime, the newspaper, tabloids, cereal boxes, candy bar wrappers, trade magazines, old journal/diary entries, NY Times best sellers, Oprah's picks, computer manuals, old love letters, young adult novels, the occasional movie script, obituaries, the stories my children have written, old love letters, stories submitted for critique to various lists, beauty magazines...

Pretty much anything I can get my grubby little fingers on.

And, sooner or later, something from one of those things that I've read is used in a story of my own. It may be the caloric value of a Kit-Kat bar, or the way I felt when BD and I split up nine years ago. It may be the way the sun looks as it set over a river on the bayou, because even though I've never been there, I can picture it in my mind because I've read about it so many times in the past.

But none of that matters. What matters is that that's the way I do it...and I don't want, or expect, YOU, or YOU , or YOU to do it my way. Or ya can if ya wanna. It don't matter to me (to quote David Gates). Much the same way it don't matter to me if Jim Valvis thinks what I'm writing is drivel. It don't matter. It don't matter if the publisher of a small horror magazine doesn't like my journal. What matters is whether or not he or she likes that 3200 word story I sent in. And whether or not he or she likes it enough to pay me for it.

As for the on-line journal being a genre or not? Eh, could be. There are several writers of "creative non-fiction" that I enjoy immensely, though I'll be damned if any of them come to mind at the moment. It's geting too late for me to think coherently. In any event, "creative non-fiction" is a legitimate genre, and in my opinion, OLJs fall under that category.

'Kay then, my two cents' worth duly recorded.

Time Waits for No One

-- Anonymous, January 27, 2000

Warning: TREMENDOUSLY LONG.

After reading Stee's parody and realizing that it would be funnier when cast in the light of the original, I at long last read Jim Valvis' now-infamous entry, and the scatological followup. There's a lot of inaccurate or misleading premises therein, so I wanted to go over them individually. I realize that the essay as a whole has been discussed to death, but it's been done mostly in the spirit of defending journal-writing as an entertaining exercise, questioning the validity of JV's conclusions [to wit: stop fiddling around on the web and do some real writing, like mine] rather than his factual assumptions.

People who write journals really want to be authors of poetry and short stories, and journalling drains their energies.

With a couple of exceptions, I've not seen any journalers professing a desire to be "real", published writers who are not actively pursuing that interest parallel to their journal writing. I can think of three playwrights/screenwriters and two journalists who are clearly advancing in their chosen fields without surrendering the pleasures of an online journal.

Journal writing and media writing may use the similar tool of the written word, but they are as different as watercolors and oils, both of which involve brushes and stretched canvas. It's true that many artists start out with watercolors and move onto oil painting later, and that the majority of well-known paintings are rendered in oils. But to be good at each requires a special subset of skills, and every good watercolorist does not make a good oil painter. Watercolors have a special charm that cannot be duplicated in oil, and it is a mistake to believe that behind every happy watercolorist lurks a frustrated oil painter.

There is money to be made in writing poems and short stories, and online journalers are cheating themselves of that wealth.

To wit: har de har har. The short-story market is vanishingly small. Think of how many publications you buy each month, and how many short stories are published in each. Daily papers and weekly magazines never publish fiction. Monthly magazines do (Playboy, Cosmopolitan, Redbook...) but rarely more than one piece per month. Specialty fiction magazines such as Granta and Witness are usually quarterly, have tiny circulations compared to the general-interest monthlies, and pay little. Short stories generally only become profitable after one has written enough to comprise a themed collection (such as The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing).

Additionally, the process of sending out queries and submissions eats away at both a writer's time (most publications require stories to be a particular length in a particular format) and wallet (certified mail isn't cheap and printing isn't free.) Combining the time taken thinking about a story, writing it, going through however many drafts it takes, proofing it, submitting it, making any recommended edits, etc. and dividing that into the cash that may or may not ultimately make it into your hands almost never results in a living wage. If money is what you're after, you'd do far better delivering pizzas. Anne Lamott, whom JV mentioned, did not become self-supporting until her fifth book. [She said so at a reading of hers I attended, at which she also noted, "So I wouldn't recommend that anyone take this on as a livelihood, not unless you feel you have a novel clawing inside of you and you feel you'll die if it doesn't get out."] I would be interested in finding out what JV's advance was on his book, how big the first print run was, and what his percentage of the gross is going to be, but I think he would regard my asking as antagonistic one-upsmanship, so I won't.

The truth is that a focussed, stylistically sound journal entry about a specific event or circumstance of general interest (such as Beth's entry about sexual discrimination, or Sara's about her Hurricane Floyd experience) is far more marketable than a short story by an unknown or little-known writer.

I'm not even going to address the issue of writing poetry for money, except to ask: when was the last time you paid for a poem? Pop music has, for better or worse, almost entirely supplanted poetry for this and future generations, since the two media are generically similar (in their use of iambs and other poetic feet to form rhythm, their rhyme structure, and their choice of themes, in which love and beauty are overrepresented.) I consider the art form of poetry to be languishing if not deceased, but this may be just because I don't read the stuff myself.

Writing for the media is essentially the same activity as writing for oneself and self-publishing on the web, so if you enjoy the latter you may as well do the former.

Having done both, I can say that these are two entirely different animals that oughtn't be thrown into the same terrarium. When you write for the media, your work is not your own. It's yours; then it's your editor's. You can either join the staff of a periodical, in which case you will be assigned stories according to your availibility and have little choice in what and even how you write, until you've been there for fifteen years or so and they finally give you a little column or let you do editorials; or you can freelance, where you can choose your subject but still find your work hacked to bits when it sees print, and enjoy an irregular salary. I am not acquainted with any freelancers whose sole household income is from writing. All either keep secondary job-jobs just for cash's sake, have an endowment or somesuch that permits them to make ends meet, or have a working spouse. I am not saying that this species of freelancer doesn't exist, just that they are, in my experience, rare.

JV's essay doesn't at all address the issue of research, which is a time-consuming and often discouraging part of any media writing that the online journaler does not have to contend with at all. It's like homework, only worse. I have spent long periods trying to track down factual figures so that I could write a single short sentence, for which I received the same per-word fee as for any other sentence. An hour's worth of research can easily net you a whopping shiny quarter. If you don't want to do research, then you necessarily limit yourself to fiction pieces, which [see above] will never keep you in Guccis, and you're lucky if they keep you in Top Ramen.

Fiction, too, uses different tools than journalling. One has to physically move characters from place to place while inserting dialogue, a process that even published novelists often find awkward. One has to have a talent for inventing people and events and conversations from whole cloth. One has to select point of view. One has to decide what information to give the reader and what to withhold -- I don't think any diarists deliberately withhold information except in the interests of privacy or superstitiously not wishing to "jinx" future events. Journalling indeed makes poor practice for fiction; why then does JV seem to assume that those who obtain a following at one can move seamlessly into the other?

Keep in mind that possessing a press pass or being able to say "I'm with [X periodical]," comes with a certain amount of cachet and so many unofficial benefits that such positions are rabidly fought over. When I was in the Communications department at U Washington -- the oldest and most prestigious journalism school west of the Mississippi, whose News Lab was the model on which Editorial Journalism programs are largely based today -- 80% of the graduates in my department were not working in journalism, their chosen field. There isn't enough room for everyone who wants to do it. Being a reporter is too interesting for the qualified to pass up. You get to intimidate public officials, poke around places that ordinarily people don't get to go, interview famous people [I did a profile on Queen Latifah!] and get into pretty much any show you want for free [David Bowie's Glass Spider tour, in my case. I could have hit him with my underwear from where I was standing.] Like acting, people are willing to do it for practically nothing just because it means never having to be bored.

Most famous, successful writers do not and did not keep journals.

This simply isn't true. Most writers I have studied with any amount of intensity kept diaries or were prolific correspondents, which also involves writing about the events of one's life without the abstraction of fiction. Leo Tolstoy borrowed from both his own and his wife's journals while writing Anna Karenina; F. Scott Fitzgerald similarly lifted from his own and Zelda's diaries and letters in many of his novels and stories. Neither of them, however, published their journals and the works reside in private collections (Fitzgerald's is at the Princeton library) and the average person wouldn't necessarily know about their existence, much less have access to them. If you pick up one or both volumes of Norton's Guide to English (or American) Literature, the standard text in most university lit departments, excerpts from the author's journals are frequently included in the biographical information at the head of each section. Even in instances where an author's diary-keeping habits are unknown even to scholars, one can't conclusively state that a diary didn't exist. (It's impossible to prove a negative, after all.) Diaries are, by and large, private endeavors and could easily be have been destroyed by their authors or kept within their estates.

Using Shakespeare as a definitive example of a writer who didn't keep a journal is fatuous; we know very little about Shakespeare's life. (A blessing to English majors everywhere who are never asked, as they are for say, Angela Carter, to contrast events from the author's life to his fiction.)

The majority of editors are interested in publishing quality pieces.

Actually, the majority of editors are interested in what will bring in the most money, since an editor who consistently greenlights poor sellers will soon find himself out on her fanny. As a fun activity, go to your local Waldenbooks or, worse, drugstore, and check out the rack with that week's bestselling paperbacks on it. Chances are it will be mostly genre fiction (mysteries, legal thrillers, romance schlock, horror titles) and the vast majority of it will be from "name" authors, those who have scored a previous hit (the omnipresent Stephen King and Dean Koontz, Patricia Cornwell, Sue Grafton, VC Andrews -- who has been ghostwritten by Andrew Neiderman for at least a decade, since VC herself is actually DEAD but people buy shit with her name on it anyway, Michael Crichton, Steve Martini, John Gresham>... I could go on, but why?) People buy what they know. They seek the familiar, the known quantity. If your writing could be termed in any way avant-guarde or "literary", be prepared to deal with rejection that has nothing to do with the quality of your writing. Remember, the average IQ is 100, and if that Joe Average isn't going to "get" your book and buy a copy for his sister for her birthday, publishers will be very wary of what you submit.

The corollary to this misunderstanding is You'll learn about the craft and better yourself by submitting your work for publication. Rejection slips are almost always form letters which are maddeningly inspecific about the reasons that one's work did not pass muster. It could be that your main character was too unlikeable or that you can't keep your verb tenses straight or that this particular magazine simply never runs stories about abortion.

We remember what's important and forget what isn't, so keeping a written record of one's life is a waste of time.

Of all his discouragement from keeping a journal, I find this the most disheartening. JV posits that keeping a diary might be worthwhile for a trip to France, say, since this is a "once in a lifetime" event. But the fact is that every day in every life is unique and fleeting. You are someone today that you might not be tomorrow. Your life isn't made up of trips to France or playing in the Olympic games or scaling Everest. It's made up of a million tiny small things that make you who you are. Being able to honestly believe that these small acts and thoughts are important enough to set down and even share is a tremendous act of self-affirmation, one that no one, whether she calls herself a "writer" or not, ought to be discouraged from doing.

Even setting aside the notion of a diary as an aid to memory, forcing yourself to put events and feelings into words can create insight that, yes, one could easily pay a shrink $100 an hour to provide. Writing out the details of an argument can make you realize how foolish you were being and provide you with incentive to explicate and apologize. Writing about your third breakup in as many months can illustrate a pattern of poor judgment that, taken as individual instances, may have escaped you. Writing about a problem you're having at work can make the solution appear, David-Copperfield-style, right before you. (Programmers call this the "human wall" approach. If you're stuck trying to make something work, you call someone who knows next to nothing about programming into the room, sit her down, and explain as slowly and in as much detail as possible what you were attempting to do. In the process of tracing the problem from its absolute origin to a total neophyte, you will more often than not figure out what you were doing wrong.)

JV does not at all address the fact that keeping a journal is, for many, simply enjoyable. If you enjoy doing something and it harms no one, you need no further justification. Spend an hour a night writing in your diary? That's about 17% of the time the average American spends watching TV. Good for you. Attempting to enumerate exactly what makes something enjoyable is as pointless as trying to explain why a joke is funny to someone who doesn't get it. Why do you enjoy it? Who cares? What's so great about throwing a frisbee? What's so fun about playing tug-of-war with a big dog? What good did picking flowers ever do anyone, really? I just don't think that the answers to these questions are important. At all.

In closing: although I doubt JV's essay will make anyone quit keeping a journal, it would be unfortunate if even a few people were to worry that their journals are perhaps a useless frittering away of their lives. Their logic might go that JV is a published writer, knows what he's talking about, and therefore must be right in saying they are being foolish and ignorant. Well, I am a published writer too (both for newspapers and websites with a circulation in the five digits and for a feminist magazine so insignificant that I had to buy practically all the copies in the greater Seattle area just to provide everyone I interviewed with a thank

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2000

In the You Heard It Here First department: how much the forum truncates is apparently proportional to the length of the article posted. How I resent you, Phil Greenspun! How I loathe you, Bill Gates!

Here's the last couple sentences:

Well, I am a published writer too (both for newspapers and websites with a circulation in the five digits and for a feminist magazine so insignificant that I had to buy practically all the copies in the greater Seattle area just to provide everyone I interviewed with a thank-you gift of the final product) and I think that keeping a journal is one of the most worthwhile things that anyone, writer or not, can do for herself.

Keep on truckin'.

............................................................

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2000

Having read the entries from Chuck and Jim, I finally decided to speak up.

First of all, I thought Chuck's challenge was a little silly, but not at all rigged. There was no way for anybody to vote "against" Jim, if neither had a name on the stories. To give them the same basis for inspiration and the same period of time to write seemed fair to me. OTOH, I don't blame Jim if he didn't want to do it -- just for claiming it was somehow slanted toward Chuck. I don't get that.

But what really bothered me is this. I've published five novels, I've taught creative writing for 8 years and I feel very strongly about this subject.

No one way is the right way.

The fact that Jim's original post absolutely reeked of "my way is the only way," and even his follow-up didn't want to acknowledge any different -- was all it took for me to delete his journal from my bookmarks.

I have been exposed to so many teachers who teach as if their methods are gospel, simply because they worked for them, and these teachers had the arrogance to assume that anyone who didn't follow their methods was never going to get published. Of course, the fact that they all were published AND they all had used different methods didn't phase them one bit. They taught from their own experience and refused to believe that anybody else's experience could be valid.

That's bullshit.

And so, in the final analysis, was Jim's post.

-- Anonymous, February 03, 2000

My official opinion is that Jim Valvis is a nerfherder.

Kim, who's the cool Seattle journaller that you didn't know about? I must add this person to my bookmark list.

-- Anonymous, February 04, 2000

Jan, you goofball. It was you.

...............................

-- Anonymous, February 05, 2000

Oh. I knew that. Ha ha. I was just testing you. Yeah, that's what I was doing! Ha ha.

I'm simultaneously flattered, and sort of disappointed that there wasn't some new awesome Seattle journaler that I didn't know about.

(Just to keep this on topic: I still think Jim Valvis is a nerfherder. And a crappy writer, too. I read the short story he posted on his site a few days back, and I thought it sucked like an Electrolux.)

-- Anonymous, February 05, 2000

Did any of you guys see Valvis's latest entry (Feb. 3rd--that link will be outdated as soon as he updates again), in which he compares his detractors to helpless infants?

I suppose it's a convenient way to dismiss your critics without having to actually defend your thesis.

-- Anonymous, February 05, 2000

Actually, no he doesn't. He compares the completely over-the-top reactions of people to his essay to learning that if you push someone who's not ready (in this instance, his baby) to do or understand something, they will get really, really cranky and start hollering.

Which is exactly what people did and why his analogy works so well.

Of course, why anyone expects Jim to defend his thesis is beyond me, when so many are so unwilling to own up to the base insecurity which has driven the posting of many an entry and rebuttal and (no doubt) pissed off email to Jim himself.

Why doesn't anyone understand that no one is trying to stop them from keeping a dumb journal? Jim doesn't care what you do - he's merely proposing that keeping an online journal is of no use to a person who wants to be a published writer of other genres.

Good lord.

-- Anonymous, February 05, 2000

Gabby:

Actually, only the first half of Jim's initial entry was aimed at lambasting the idea that keeping a journal is a good exercise for developing writers. The second half presented suppositions why non-writers might want to keep journals, and argued against those as well. The upshot of the whole essay was that there are no good reasons for anyone at all to keep a journal.

The fact that people are hurt by this is understandable in light of the fact that Jim is held in high regard by much of the journalling community. He has been nominated for diarist.net awards in, I think, every quarter that they have been offered. If people did not respect him, his opinions would not have the power to wound. He is lashing out at the very community that comprises much of his popular following, using the fact that they take his words seriously as an arsenal against them. Then, when people are stung, he smirks at them, calls them poo-poo heads and doo-doo brains, and states that they are too immature to comprehend the wisdom that he has so graciously offered them.

While some have responded with hysteria and ad hominem, I have seen many calm, reasoned replies to Jim that do not reek of immaturity or oversensitivity, but he lumps all critiques of his points together, thus offending both those who have reacted both emotionally and those who have responded intellectually. At this point I think a little vitriol is sort of his due, since he has displayed all manner of internal logical inconsistency: he's used a journal as a launching-pad to say that journals are time-sinks [unless they are exactly like his; his remedy is to "start another journal, one like Nothing, By God"]; said that writing not done with the eventual goal of publication is foolish in a piece that is unpublishable outside of an online journal; castigated those who are not "mature" enough to deal with his theses mere days after writing a rebuttal saturated with references to "poopoo".

I'll put on my Freudian cap here for a second. Jim says that he used to keep a journal, but realized that it was dumb and stopped. You used to publicly wail how no one was nice to you and how you would never be respected and permitted to play with the cool kids, then morphed into the unflappable Gabby we know today. Rooted in both of your frequently-expressed disdain for those who, respectively, keep online journals [Jim] and permit themselves to be hurt by criticism [Gabby] seems to be a desire to publicly flagellate your former selves. You have to prove that you are not the pathetic people you once were by reviling those who behave as you once did. It strikes me as a not-well-hidden form of self-loathing. Perhaps you could both be more understanding that the way you once behaved is a stage that needs to be worked through and not something that one needs to feel shame over.

Being mature and well-adjusted does not mean being able to let attacks roll off you like water off a duck's back. It means being able to evaluate the intent and authority behind those attacks and react accordingly. Whether or not one feels stung by Jim's full-frontal assault on journalling ought to depend on how much weight one assigns to Jim's opinions. I reiterate that the emotional reaction he's generated is not entirely a sign of his readers' weakness but rather the fact that they look up to him.

You can't have it both ways. If you position yourself as a sage and a teacher, your students are going to feel awful when told they are stupid. If you say they are wrong to take you so seriously, then you really mean that they are wrong for looking up to you as an authority and should have dismissed your opinion to begin with. You can't have both people's admiration and their disregard.

I'm not expressing this well because it's a beautiful day and I'm in a rush to get outside and had about four major points I wanted to make in this single post. I hope it makes sense; I'll throw it up now and go over it later for clarity.

..............

-- Anonymous, February 05, 2000

I'm convinced that you and I have not read the same essay, Kim. Because the latter portion of Jim's essay is also based on the "reasons why writers keep journals" theory. It doesn't bother to address Jim and Jane Non-Writer in the slightest.

At the root of this entire discussion, of course, is the issue that the online journalling community - such as it is - seems largely and repeatedly unable and unwilling to accept any sort of criticism.

-- Anonymous, February 05, 2000

actually, part 2, subsection 4 of his original essay is quite enthusiastic in criticizing ANYONE who claims to keep an online journal merely as a hobby.

-- Anonymous, February 05, 2000

Ok, and tons of people have been quite enthusiastic about criticizing his view point, complete with irrelevent namecalling.

I'd say that when it comes to opinions that lack merit, he's lagging way in the rear here.

And he's had the good grace to confine it to a couple essays that were planned and executed instead of scattershooting them all over the place. People write all SORTS of essays about things others disagree with without turning it into a big crusade to jump in and say how awful they find the opinion in question. What makes this one any different?

I wonder what anyone doing this would think if he made even ONE tiny criticism of something they wrote ABOUT - pick a topic any topic.

The cries of "it's my journal, and I can write about what I waaaannnaaa, and you can't touch that cos it's my liiiiiiffffeeee and my thouuuugggghhhtttss" would be deafening.

At this point, even if I do disagree with what he said (I think it was mostly based on the flawed premise that all journalers ARE desiring to be writers, and therefore he did not separate the two), I'm appalled at the double standard being applied to how sacred folks want him to regard THIER journals, but have no trouble at all bashing what he says in his. And notice he's not dragging it up on lists and in forums or anywhere else. He's writing it in his journal. Period.

Whoever it was that said the journal community as a whole can't stand critisism is right.

-- Anonymous, February 05, 2000

I didn't have any problem with Jim's original essay except that I thought he was dead wrong about a few things. I didn't find it particularly offensive and I thought he was right about some things. He was wrong about others.

But I don't understand why you're going off the deep end about this, Lynda. No one is criticizing Jim's life or saying he ought to live it differently. Well, okay, Chuck's challenge was juvenile and silly, but that's different than what's happening on this forum. Jim expressed an opinion, and in his second entry, he expressed it pretty fucking rudely. People have every right to disagree with him, and that has nothing to do with whether they can accept criticism of their journals.

-- Anonymous, February 05, 2000

I'm 'going off the deep end' because literally for the last month or more I've been reading hundreds of posts, entries, you name it - first about Dave and then about Jim from a lot of people who would take great issue if the same were done to them and who have at times been rude as well in the expression of their own opinions.

Folks are this peeved at one person's opinion, but see no problem with that MANY opinions dumped all over them in response? Has anything at all new been said about this in recent days?

If I'm going off the deep end here, it's only to catch up with where everyone else has been hanging out lately.

There've been some good essays come out of this in answer to his challenge, including one excellent parody I know he's not thrilled by, but was well written and funny and made the point, and ain't nobody going to top that. But there's also been an extraordinarily disproportionate amount of poorly written dumbassery that really makes it absurd for his 'rudeness' to be at question at this point and pretty well proves his point about writing.

It's really time to call it even and move on. And yes, I do think it's because his subject matter was journaling and it struck too close to the bone for a lot of people that it has gone on at such great length.

-- Anonymous, February 05, 2000

Well, no, I think the reason there has been so much response is that Jim said some very provocative things about the one topic that we all happen to have in common -- online journaling, and why we do it. If he'd talked about animal rights or feminism, he might have gotten just as heated a response, but not everyone would have been interested.

Again, I don't think your comparison between people reacting to Jim's expression of opinion about other online journalers and people who don't want their personal lives critized is valid. Apples and oranges.

And, of course, if your objection is that the topic is boring you, I suggest you stop reading about it. I've skipped most of the journal entries on this topic and I don't feel that I've suffered any.

-- Anonymous, February 06, 2000

Unless I missed something major in his entries, he avoided talking about any other online journalERS, and spoke on online journalING. In return, people have been talking about *him* (I am not taking issue with those who are responding idea to idea, but with the huge amount of response that is invective toward the individual for expressing an opinion about a concept.)

And yes, the option not to read is always in place, and one that everyone who has 'never read his journal' but ran over there quick like a bunny so that they too could jump on the Offended Bandwagon would have been well advised to take.

I've said all I need to say on this now.

-- Anonymous, February 06, 2000

Uh, Lynda, I think you missed the entire second entry, in which he talked about hypothetical journalers in a way that made it pretty clear where he looked for inspiration.

-- Anonymous, February 06, 2000

Hi, Lynda. I think your frustration comes, in part, from the fact that response seems to have been so diffuse -- spread all over the community, in mailing lists, entries, and forums -- rather than consolodated as the original articles were. (I say "seems to be" because, besides this forum and Stee's post, I haven't seen any of it, but I'll assume you're talking about yammering outside this forum.) However, the four entries of Jim's that have generated all the talk are, in themselves, 80K. (Yeah, it surprised me too. When I tried to copy the third one, "An Addendum..." into SimpleText with the other two so that I could get an idea of the size of the material as a whole, SimpleText actually wouldn't let me paste it in because the document was too big. Woah.) If Jim didn't keep adding to the bulk of his 80K gorilla we all would have run out of tooth-gnashing vigor a long time ago. I dunno if the bandwidth expended on felling the gorilla has can be held in proper contempt considering how overstuffed that gorilla's getting.

Big events can sometimes seem unavoidable, but they really aren't. Everyone else is sick of Elian Gonzales by now, but I've been consciously avoiding it and remain blissful in my ignorance. When an award-winning online journaler says that journals are worthless, well, that's news of Elian-like proportions -- but only in the online journalling community, which is actually quite small. Only by reading lots of journals, subscribing to lots of journalling mailing lists, and reading lots of journalling forums can one reach the state that you seem to be in, where you feel overwhelmed by the barrage of virtual ink being devoted to a single issue. But to those of us who are involved only peripherally, it doesn't seem that way. Anyone who uses more than one medium to address Jim's points is probably being excessive, yeah. I would argue that anyone so involved in the journalling community to make Jim-related discussion seem omnipresent is being excessive in her involvement, though.

I agree with you that digging into Jim as a writer or a human being is at all relevant to the points he's brought up, and I wish people would confine themselves to addressing his words rather than his person. In Xeney's forum, at least [which is the only arena I've seen these articles brought up in] such posters seem to be the minority.

Just because non-regular Jim readers went to see this specific article doesn't mean that they were looking to be offended. They might have heard the jist of his post and wanted to see how he backed up his contentions; they may have found it unbelievable that a professional writer who keeps a journal would say that professional writers shouldn't keep journals; or they may have just been curious. I don't see any reason to jump to the conclusion that they were looking for trouble.

.....................

-- Anonymous, February 06, 2000

You know, if you're actively looking to be offended, you're going to be offended. At last, one thing in the world that comes with a gold plated guarantee.

-- Anonymous, February 06, 2000

This morning while I was making coffee I remembered an incident that has some bearing on this situation.

Over a year ago, I posted to diary-l some entertaining hate mail I received, a letter that, among other things, said that I was a narcissist for keeping a diary on the web. I left the address of the sender attached, and she received a number of replies (I don't know how many, but it must have been more than one) from diary-l subscribers, which I gather were of a hostile nature. Jim Valvis stepped in and said that I was responsible for the ensuing flamage because I should have known that diarists can't stand for any critique and anyone could have predicted that this fallout would happen, even though I had done nothing to encourage people to write to this person.

This leads me to believe that JV knew precisely what he was getting into when he posted his original essay. He knew that indignation levels would rise and the fur would fly, but he chose to do it anyway. One of JV's charms is that he's a shit-stirrer; it must have been as long as two years ago that he faced off with the Gus by calling him "Karlie-boy and his Musings of Premuck". If we take his statements on diary-l and apply them to this situation, the person responsible for the current hoo-ha is not those posting about JV's manifesto, but JV himself! He should have known that a subset of diary-keepers are helpless to stop themselves from mouthing off to someone who assaults their hobby! They are a HIVE MIND.

[Sybil Fawlty Statin' the Bleedin' Obvious Award: I don't believe this, but Jim claims he does; that is, when it's me stirring the pot.]

Anyway, I do think this indicates that Jim deliberately provokes negative attention and, indeed, does not want us to stop talking about his essay (even in the most charged terms) so any admonition to stop throwing tomatoes his direction is misguided. He's capable of defending himself (and defending himself, and defending himself, and defending himself...) He has built his audience from the beginning by trompling on the heads of other journallers, and has always stated that the primary goal of a writer is to be read, and he is smart enough that I think we should look at everything he does in light of his ambitions.

I think statement such as "the diary community as a whole can't take criticism," are just silly. The community is made up of individuals whom, to my knowledge, do not have their cerebral cortexes connected with fiber-optic cable. Some can be gracious, some can't. This thread has seen many reasoned responses and a handful of ad hominem. In this instance, though, acknowledgement that the criticism is valid can only be illustrated by scrapping one's diary, and I don't think any one man's opinion is, or ought to be, powerful enough to inspire such a rash act. The proper response is counterargument.

If one says "I think football is pointless," in a room packed with football players, then one should expect one's sentiments not to be well-received. (Received. Hee! No, they might get defensive!)

Out of curiosity: has it really ever worked for anyone to go stride into a room where everyone is discussing a single topic to insist, "What you're talking about has been beaten to death! I'm so bored with it! Talk about something that interests ME!" because I've never known that to have much effect. Instead of realizing that yes, their conversation has hitherto been stupid, usually the people involved will regard the interrupter as self-centered and rude. No one is beaming the contents of this thread, or diary-l or journal-l or MetaTalk or wherever else you frequent, directly into anyone's head. Just because you've heard it all before doesn't mean that the rest of us, who don't read sheet after sheet of journal-centric copy every day, should sit on our hands to avoid boring you.

................

-- Anonymous, February 06, 2000

Well, I'm a non-regular Jim reader, and I went to his essay with zero expectations, mostly because it was before this big hoo-rah hit the fan, and I had no idea what his essay was about.

And yes, it still irritated me, as did his follow-up essay, and the one short story I read of his.

Why did it irritate me? Well, for one thing, his arguments are specious and illogical. So, first, journalists suck because they're hobbyists, but then, no wait, they're not hobbyists, they're APPRENTICES, and that's why they suck! Or something. I was trying desperately to follow the [brilliant|twisted] logic, but failed.

Second, why does he even care about other journals and how much they suck? If he's a good writer and writes a good journal, why does he feel the need to rain on everybody else's parade?

Third, he's not a good writer. I could base this on multiple things, but will limit myself to one in the interest of conserving space, and that is: If you're going to make one of your characters a German Jew, don't have her speaking with a Franssh ack-seent.

Normally I would not really give a crap one way or the other if some random journaler is a crappy-ass writer or not. Hey, it's their journal. C'est la vie. But this particular crappy-ass writer has taken it upon himself to criticize all the other writers out there for partaking in a medium that (according to him) lends itself to crappy- ass writing. I don't know, it just doesn't add up for me.

Physician, heal thyself, or something.

-- Anonymous, February 07, 2000

So I've come back to this thread to see how it developed, and I must say that if Jim Valvis wrote his piece as an exercise in shit-stirring, he did a good job. Here are a few more quick thoughts in response to the recent posts here. Unfortunately my computer is currently in a bit of a snit this evening and for some reason won't let me near any Xoom sites, such as "Nothing By God", which is a bugger cos I wanted to reread the piece before writing here again. So I'll have to go on my memory of it.

If we take his main point as being that keeping a journal is not a good idea for an aspiring writer looking for publication etc, I don't know that I would necessarily agree or disagree with that idea completely. It's kind of down to the needs of the individual writer. If the person keeping the journal is not otherwise interested in becoming a writer of anything other than their journal, it's irrelevant to them. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm pretty sure my own journal-keeping doesn't really help my own outside writing (even though a few essays I've written have sprung from it). By the same token, though, I'm pretty sure it doesn't actively hinder it, either. And maybe it does help others. I can't really say.

If we take his main point as being that keeping a journal is a waste of time and useless in itself, then I'm in great disagreement with him. No need to restate what I said in my earlier post on this theme, people can just scroll up to it. This leads into the question of whether or not we're being overly defensive and overreacting. Possibly we are. But I think that when someone puts their heart into something like a journal and someone else tells them it's irrelevant, useless and they're wasting their time, that person's entitled to get angry. So I think those of us who are ticked off at the Valvis piece have a right to be.

What interests me is that Mr Valvis evidently adheres to Samuel Johnson's dictum that "no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money". The general tone of the piece, as I recall it, was that any writing which is not done for the purpose of being sold is inherently worthless. I think I found that idea more infuriating than anything else he says, this display of purely commercial attitude. As if anything not done for monetary profit is wrong. For my part, I haven't had any great success in landing anything I've written with a publisher, but that's because in the main I've never sought to do that. That's not my be all and end all of writing, and I'm sure it's not that for a lot of others.

I work for a community radio station. This is a volunteer thing, so I don't get paid money for it. Ultimately it'd be quite nice if I could move from there to a paying job with a paying station, but for the moment that's not the case and I'm having a good time with my unpaid job as it is. Jim Valvis would probably regard this as an untenable attitude, but that's how it is. I tend to approach my writing in the same waymoney would be nice but I enjoy doing it, and keep doing it, regardless of what financial reward it brings.

Finally, I still enjoy the irony of Valvis blasting the idea of online journals from within the pages of an online journal. I think that's been noted here before, but it's worth saying again.

So that's my 5 cents worth. Hopefully I haven't ranted on too long.

Tonight We Sleep In Separate Ditchescontains absolutely no reference to James Valvis anywhere

-- Anonymous, February 12, 2000