Diary - Entry 15/15

1 November 1868 Began the second part of 'Little Women.' I can do a chapter a day, and in a month I mean to be done. A little success is so inspiring that I now find my 'Marches' sober, nice people, and as I can launch into the future, my fancy has more play. Girls write to ask who the little women marry, as if that was the only end and aim of a woman's life. I won't marry Jo to Laurie to please any one. ~ Louisa May Alcott

Diary - Entry 14/15

10 October 1855 I've been in a lazily apathetic, perpetually dissatisfied state for a long time now. Won another 130 roubles at cards. Bought a horse and bridle for 150. What nonsense! My career is literature - to write and write! From tomorrow I'll work all my life or throw up everything - rules, religion, propriety - everything. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Diary - Entry 13/15

19 August 1952 1 A.M. Face it kid, you've had a hell of a lot of good breaks. No Elizabeth Taylor, maybe. No child Hemingway, but god, you are growing up. In other words, you've come a long way from the ugly introvert you were only five years ago. Pats on the back in order? O.K., tan, tall, blondish, not half bad. And brains, 'intuitiveness' in one direction at least. You get along with a great many different kinds of people. Under the same roof, close living, even. You have no real worries about snobbishness, pride, or a swelled head. You are willing to work. Hard, too. You have willpower and are getting to be practical about living - and also you are getting published. So you got a good right to write all you want. Four acceptances in three months - $500 Mille, $25, $10 Seventeen, $4.50 Christian Science Monitor (from caviar to peanuts, I like it all the way). ~ Sylvia Plath

Diary - Entry 12/15

1 August 1950 It is hot, steamy and wet. It is raining. I am tempted to write a poem. But I remember what it said on one rejection slip: After a heavy rainfall, poems titled 'Rain' pour in from across the nation. Sylvia Plath

Diary - Entry 11/15

14 June 1850 Once again I have taken up my diary, and once again with new fervour and a new purpose. How many times is that? I can't remember. Never mind, perhaps I'll drop it again; but it's a pleasant occupation and it will be pleasant to re-read it, just as it was pleasant to re-read my old ones. There are lots of thoughts in one's head, and some of them seem very remarkable, but when you examine them they turn out to be nonsense; others on the other hand seem sensible - and that's what a diary is needed for. On the basis of one's diary it's very convenient to judge oneself. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Diary - Entry 10/15

4 June 1831

I wonder if I shall burn this sheet of paper like most others I have begun in the same way. To write a diary, I have thought of very often at far & near distances of time: but how could I write a diary without throwing upon paper my thoughts, all my thoughts - the thoughts of my heart as well as of my head? - and then how could I bear to look on them after they were written? Adam made fig leaves necessary for the mind, as well as for the body. And such a mind I have! So very exacting & exclusive & eager & headlong - & strong & so very very often wrong! Well! But I will write: I must write - & the oftener wrong I know myself to be, the less wrong I shall be in one thing - the less vain I shall be! -

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Diary - Entry 9/15

14 April 1910

I've been reading through my books. I oughtn't to write any more. I think in this respect, I've done all I could. But I want to, I terribly want to.

~Leo Tolstoy

Diary - Entry 8/15

13 March 1921 [T.S.] Eliot dines here tonight, alone, since his wife is in a nursing home, not much to our regret. But what about Eliot? Will he become 'Tom'? What happens with friendships undertaken at the age of forty? Do they flourish and live long? I suppose a good mind endures, and one is drawn to it, owning to having a good mind myself. Not that Tom admires my writing, damn him. ~ Virginia Woolf

Diary - Entry 7/15

24 November 1813

I do think the mighty stir made about scribbling and scribes, by themselves and others - a sign of effeminacy, degeneracy, and weakness. Who would write, who had any thing better to do?

~ Lord Byron

Diary - Entry 6/15

29 February 1920

Oh, to be a writer, a real writer given up to it and to it alone! Oh, I failed to-day; I turned back, looked over my shoulder, and immediately it happened. I felt as though I too were struck down. The day turned cold and dark on the instant. It seemed to belong to summer twilight in London, to the clang of the gates as they close the garden, to the deep light painting the high houses, to the smell of leaves and dust, to the lamp-light, to that stirring of the senses, to the langour of twilight, the breath of it on one's cheek, to all those things which (I feel to-day) are gone from me for ever...I feel today that I shall die soon and suddenly; but not of my lungs.

~ Katherine Mansfield

Diary - Entry 5/15

18 March 1861

You can't read any genuine history - as that of Herodotus or the Venerable Bede - without perceiving that our interest depends not on the subject but on the man, - on the manner in which he treats the subject and the importance he gives it. A feeble writer and without genius must have what he thinks a great theme, which we are already interested in through the accounts of others, but a genius - a Shakespeare, for instance - would make the history of his parish more interesting than another's history of the world.

~ H. D. Thoreau

Diary - Entry 4/15

25 February 1957

Ted's book of poems - The Hawk in the Rain - has won the first Harper's publication contest under the 3 judges: W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender & Marianne Moore! Even as I write this, I am incredulous. The little scared people reject. The big unscared practising poets accept. I knew there would be something like this to welcome us to New York! We will publish a bookshelf of books between us before we perish! And a batch of brilliant healthy children! I can hardly wait to see the letter of award (which has not yet come) & learn details of publication. To smell the print off the pages!

~ Sylvia Plath

Diary - Entry 3/15

13 February 1951 It must be told that my second work day is a bust as far as getting into the writing. I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straightening shyness that assails one. It is as though the words were not only indelible but that they spread out like dye in water and colour everything around them. A strange and mystic business, writing. Almost no progress has taken place since it was invented. The Book of the Dead is as good and as highly developed as anything in the 20th century and much better than most. And yet in spite of this lack of a continuing excellence, hundreds of thousands of people are in my shoes - praying feverishly for relief from their word pangs. And one thing we have lost - the courage to make new words or combinations. Somewhere the old bravado has slipped off into a gangrened scholarship. Oh! you can make words if you enclose them in quotation marks. This indicates that it is dialect and cute. ~ John Steinbeck

Diary - Entry 2/15

12 February 1951

Lincoln's Birthday. My first day of work in my new room. It is a very pleasant room and I have a drafting table to work on which I have always wanted - also a comfortable chair given me by Elaine. In fact I have never had it so good and so comfortable. I have known such things to happen - the perfect pointed pencil - the paper persuasive - the fantastic chair and a good light and no writing. Surely a man is a most treacherous animal full of his treasured contradictions. He may not admit it but he loves his paradoxes.

Now that I have everything, we shall see whether I have anything. It is exactly that simple. Mark Twain used to write in bed - so did our greatest poet. But I wonder how often they wrote in bed - or whether they did it twice and the story took hold. Such things happen. Also I would like to know what things they wrote in bed and what things they wrote sitting up. All of this has to do with comfort in writing and what its value is. I should think that a comfortable body would let the mind go freely to its gathering. But such is the human that he might react in an opposite way. Remember my father's story about the man who did not dare be comfortable because he went to sleep. That might be true of me too. Now I am perfectly comfortable in body. I think my house is in order. Elaine, my beloved, is taking care of all the outside details to allow me the amount of free untroubled time every day to do my work. I can't think of anything else necessary to write except a story and the will and the ability to tell it.

~John Steinbeck

Diary - Entry 1/15

26 January 1930

When we made up our six months accounts, we found I had made about £3020 last year - the salary of a civil servant; a surprise to me, who was content with £200 for so many years. But I shall drop very heavily I think. The Waves won't sell more thna 2,000 copies.

~Virginia Woolf

Writer's Diary

Do you keep a diary? Personal pages meant only for your eyes? Thanks to the Internet, blogs, and online diaries, not much of private thoughts remain. We share the struggles of our journey online. We worry if we are the only ones who are having trouble. The struggle is not new, and neither are the problems which may seem unique to us.

Writers from the past shared many of the same issues we feel today. Looking at the thoughts of some of the most famous writers/poets, I find comfort that they weren't born successful.

So for the next two weeks, I will share an entry a day from the private journals of some of the writers/poets. May you find inspiration and comfort from that too.