Review by Booklist Review
The title comes from Virginia Woolf; the whole is liberally laced with quotations from journal writers and diarists celebrated and obscure. Johnson, who teaches journal and memoir workshops, devotes the three parts of her book to helping writers find practical inspiration, discover pattern and meaning, and move the material of a journal into memoir or fiction. She sees journal writing as a way of mining for the self, not only to observe and to reflect, but also to learn, to teach, and to hoard moments that can be held in the hand and examined later, like found stones. She devises stratagems for keeping the inner voice she calls the Censor at bay. Her exercises are direct and simple enough: "Think of a room you've known well over three stages in life. How did it--and you--change over time?" Johnson has collected journals from all sorts of people and uses their infinite variety well. Valuable in all sorts of ways for anyone looking for the right words. --GraceAnne A. DeCandido
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Leather-bound five-year diaries were once popular gifts at children's birthday parties, sometimes providing the first taste of a lifelong pleasure. While an estimated 12 million journals are sold annually, Johnson, a teacher of creative nonfiction at Harvard and Wellesley, has found that people also record their lives on dinner napkins, menus, slips of paper and, increasingly, the computer. In her follow-up to The Hidden Writer, for which she won a PEN Award, she proffers advice for journal keepers who want to develop material for later books or who simply enjoy logging life's events. Commiserating on diaries abandoned as "joyless collections of grievances," she offers tips on how to "break the deadlock of introspective obsession." She advises perfectionists on how to silence their censorD"that dark, icy whisper of the confidence thief." Apt remarks by Virginia Woolf, Tobias Wolff, Annie Dillard and others add to her perceptive and often humorous insights on unearthing the interior life, improving observation skills and finding images that reveal significant motivations. The transformation of a factual log into a creative work requires investigating essential patterns: disclosing what has been left out of memory, charting periods of great intensity and connecting the dots between events and influences to develop a true narrative. Because a journal is usually a private affair that offers little opportunity for discussion, people seeking direction on keeping a successful one should welcome this thoughtful guidebook. (Jan. 4) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Highly personal (in fact, almost intimate), Johnson's long essay centers on the discipline of keeping a journal and the effect reading other journals has on a creative life. The essay is broken into chapters that provide some organizational structure; threaded throughout are exercises and activities to motivate, encourage, and inspire. Further, each chapter features stories and journal entries from well-known writers as well as everyday people. A gifted storyteller, Johnson provides examples on how the discipline of daily, reflective writing is crucial to nurturing creativity and skillfully weaves together the relationship between the creative process and the craft of writing. This tome is beautifully written, but as it focuses on transforming one's journal rather than getting published, its audience is rather limited. Johnson teaches memoir and creative nonfiction writing at Harvard and has published extensively in national newspapers and both scholarly and popular magazines. She won the PEN/Jerard Fund Award for The Hidden Writer: Diaries and the Creative Life. An optional purchase.ÄDenise S. Sticha, Seton Hill Coll., Greensburg, PA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Johnson (The Hidden Writer, 1997) has compiled dozens of intriguing anecdotes related to journal-writing. We discover, for example, that Truman Capote preferred writing in other peoples homes, while John Updike delegated four rooms in his house to a different genre of writing. The author also reveals here the great lengths to which diarists have gone to ensure their privacy: women dwelling in Chinas Hunan province write in a secret diary language known only to them, while da Vinci wrote his journals in mirror-writing and Samuel Pepys kept his in code. Johnsons enthusiasm for diaries is infectious, and she urges the reader to view the journal as the one friend youd never betray. She sees journals as a means of preserving family historyeven traditional recipesfor the next generation, and as a cathartic way to cope with critical illness, divorce, and the passing of loved ones. In addition, keeping a journal can help us find hidden patterns in lifes seemingly random events and prod us to make suitable decisions. And, yes, the author sees the journal as raw material for publishable memoirs, and offers advice on how to cull such material. An elegantly written study of an increasingly popular genre.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
