I Have 233 Diaries, Which I’ve Kept Since 1993

Last month, I published a book about my many, many diaries. The book (which is a graphic memoir called Dear Sophie, Love Sophie; and which you can and should buy) employed a practice of writing back from the present to past versions of myself, as was recorded in my old journals.

But in order to have old journals, you need a good daily writing habit. And mine is all about throwing things against the wall. Here are my tips!

Keep your artifacts in your journal.

My grandmother bought me this fancy leather-bound journal that came in a cardboard box as a present when I graduated from high school. I remember thinking, “This is SUPERFLUOUS.” (And wow, what a prestigious thought, as I had only just learned the word “superfluous.”)

But then I went to a great show at The Aladdin Theater, and I wanted a place to keep the program. And then I lost a favorite CD, but I loved the lyrics book it came with. I realized I wanted a place for these things, and hey, this box was the perfect size! I tucked a bunch of things away in the box, and after that opted for journals or diaries that had a folder in the back for other ephemera.

My husband keeps memory boxes: just any old box will do, and whenever you want to save a ticket stub, a playbill, a strip of photos, or the first draft of a wedding speech, it goes in the current “Living Box.” You write a date on the box when you begin it (freezer tape is great for this), and then when it gets full, you write the date again. Then you have artifacts sorted by year, stacked in your basement, where your wife can look through them and learn about past versions of you.

Draw your story.

I like to draw, but I’ve never considered myself a particularly good artist. Diaries are great places to draw things you’re looking at, or that you’re thinking about. Lynda Barry suggests drawing something you remember from every day. I think that’s a great idea. I often put things I overhear in talk bubbles. It feels good to use the other side of your brain.

Get out your stickers, your fun markers, your decals.

I’ll say this once and I’ll say it a million times: USE your nice things. They are there to be used, and your life is happening RIGHT NOW. There is not going to be a better time. Use your good stickers, use your unblemished wooden stamp, use your ribbons and your loveliest postcards. Even the most marvelous things lose their spark if you let them sit on the shelf long enough.

Use packaging tape.

This hack has kept a lot of things well preserved in my diaries. I have also stuck packaging tape over photographs and interesting stamps, or, my personal favorite: four-leaf clovers.

Don’t tape food in your diary.

Young Sophie did NOT use her nice things. I saved things for some far-off moment I imagined, but that never arrived, and I have regrets. One of my regrets is that I thought it would be cool to save this candy heart (even though I LOVED TO EAT THEM). As a result, different animals have tried to eat this particular diary, and it smells weird.

Diaries don’t have to be of a specific type.

I recently made a post called “The Magic of Making A Little Book,” and you can use it to make the kind of book on the right. To make a bound book like the one on the left, cut the covers off an old book from the thrift store (VHS tapes also work well), get a nice stack of scrap paper that roughly fits inside, and either have it bound at Staples, or be like me and buy a U-Wire binding machine (here’s one similar to the machine I have). I have bought a lot of things that I regret buying (honestly, my stack paper cutter just gathers dust), but I don’t regret buying the binding machine. It’s fun and easy to use, and you can instantly upgrade any stack of papers into a book. If you DO buy a U-Wire binding machine, also get a cheap box of projector covers (8.5 x 11 sheets of clear plastic), as they make great protective covers for everything.

Write everything down, and staple it in later.

Oh man, I remember this diary entry. I only had a pad of paper I’d lifted from my then-boyfriend’s parent’s house, and I had just had the most amazing weekend and didn’t want to lose ANY OF IT, but I hadn’t brought my diary along with me. Writing furiously on the plane, I got down every detail I could possibly remember. Now it’s stapled in this diary, and I’m so glad I have it.

Try a page-a-day diary.

I cannot tell you how much I recommend this practice in a mere paragraph. I wrote a whole post about it. I still keep a page-a-day alongside my everyday scratch pad-style journal.

Don’t be precious about your diary.

The best advice I have for anyone hoping to keep a diary or a journal is to re-imagine it as a scratch pad. Let your notebook be a living thing, and take it everywhere with you. Combine your sketchbook, your diary, and your notebook into one hybrid creature that can pick up whatever you want to put something down.

You’ll never regret writing a bunch of lists or scribbling a phone number down in your journal; you might, however, regret not having a record of a whole chunk of your life because you were trying to follow “rules” about what your notebooks had to be. While I have preferences about what kind of notebook I like to use (these days I’m all about bullet journal-style dot pages, without any of the bullet journal methodology), I am also wide open to using whatever is lying around. The main thing that keeps me moving is that I only have one notebook going at any one time, and that’s what helps me to fill them. When I start working on a project, I am not averse to (GASP!) tearing pages out of my notebook and putting them in a different folder dedicated to the project.