I’ve kept a diary since 1990, but I didn’t start adding titles until about 2010. As I began typing up my entries and putting them into volumes, I found the entries easier to identify and keep separate by adding titles to them. Dates are easily confused and easily forgotten. I already centered each entry on a theme, so the titles were easy to add once I identified the theme.
As my writing evolved, I found myself blending the diary of daily events with both a journal of feelings and the more formal essay. I created hybrid that I think that keeps the diaries engaging and interesting. The main component of this hybrid is that it has to have some sort of theme or central idea. I open with the main idea and then try to circle back to it at the close of the entry.
Themes and Titles come from a variety of sources. It could be from a book I read that week or it could come from a song or poem I quote in the entry. Sometimes I take particular word and explore its meaning and relation to something I am thinking or feeling at a particular moment in time. Sometimes a phrase will just pop into my head, other times I have to work to tease the word or words out for the entry. Let me give you some examples.
Here are my diary entries and their titles for 2020:
- January 7, 2020 Execration
- January 20, 2020 Wolf Moon
- January 30, 2020 Baymont
- February 12, 2020 Cloudy
- February 23, 2020 Locke and Key
- March 1, 2020 To Be Continued
- March 6, 2020 Once Were Warriors
- March 16, 2020 Crown
- March 23, 2020 Social Distancing
- April 2, 2020 Quality
- April 12, 2020 Pensive
- April 21, 2020 Uncertainty Principle
- May 5, 2020 Repurpose
- May 14, 2020 Infinitesimal
- May 21, 2020 Wedding
- June 2, 2020 Quiet Here
- June 17, 2020 Moxie
- July 3, 2020 Panem
- July 20, 2020 Song Birds and Snakes
- August 5, 2020 Sink Back In
- August 18, 2020 The Worst
- September 2, 2020 Good Trouble
- September 15, 2020 Kyoshi
- September 30, 2020 Tar Baby
- October 15, 2020 Lurking
- October 31, 2020 Blue Moon
- November 15, 2020 Normaler Things
- December 13, 2020 Home and Garden
- November 30, 2020 Winter’s Bone
- December 31, 2020 Discovery
carilynn27 