Against Journaling: Dennis Tang on the Joys of Not Writing It All Down

I remember being a small child, doing arithmetic at the kitchen table, but not what state I was in—Delaware, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, we moved all around. I remember the face of my middle school bully, but not his name. I remember falling desperately in love with a girl in my college Shakespeare lecture, but not what words we actually exchanged. At the time, I must have trusted I’d remember every detail, every second. I’d felt those moments so deeply, after all. How could I not? Nothing marks growing up like being proven wrong. I was wrong, there is simply too much, too distant, to remember. Accumulating memories flatten under their own weight. Watershed events are smoothed down to a plain. Indelible images smudge and blur. Moments that once felt committed to film, cinematic, are shaved down to a point: a single sharp feeling of joy, heartbreak, or loss. What’s most easily lost are the specifics. Dates forgotten. Details jumbled. Was it raining that night, or am I being dramatic? In that Shakespeare lecture, were we reading The Tempest, or Twelfth Night ? Bits and pieces are lost forever, now. Memories become like dreams of the past. For those who hope that a journal might provide an empirical record, the subjectivity of the author always interferes. And yet, I have never kept a journal. Perhaps I should have. Written it down, I mean. As a writer, it feels like a duty. To keep a journal is a near-ubiquitous piece of introductory advice. Start a journal. Write in it every day. We hear so often about the journals of famous authors—Woolf, Sontag, Kafka, O’Connor, and so on—that it’s as if the rest of us are lazy, negligent, bad writers . Letting the raw material of our art slip through our hands. In a world of endless writing prescriptions and inspiration, such is the party line. As a writer, few things fill me with more guilt that I nevertheless, steadfastly do not do. Why is that? Every day, I wonder if something is happening to me that I’ll want to remember. I fail […]

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