Nine Ideas for Journals from Poet Bernadette Mayer
Also: Thomas Mallon's and George Eliot's diaries
Prompts
The prompts below are taken directly from the writing experiments of Bernadette Mayer. I learned about the late poet’s “prompts” from the newsletter of Mason Currey.
Do experiments with sensory memory: record all sense images that remain from breakfast, study which senses engage you, escape you.
Keep a journal that is restricted to one set of ideas, for instance, a food or dream journal, a journal that is only written in when it is raining, a journal of ideas about writing, a weather journal. Remember that journals do not have to involve "good" writing-they are to be made use of. Simple one-line entries like "No snow today" can be inspiring later. Have 3 or 4 journals going at once, each with a different purpose. Create a journal that is meant to be shared and commented on by another writer--leave half of each page blank for the comments of the other.
Write a soothing novel in twelve short paragraphs.
Write only in questions.
Thomas Mallon on Diaries, Time, and the Smallest Things
“At the time you're writing it, you don't think that you could ever reread this and have it mean something completely different from what it appeared to mean to you as you actually wrote the sentence. There are all these things that, you know, one has forgotten. Sometimes the smallest things that you write - the smallest incidents, remarks that you heard, overheard - sometimes those are the things I found in a diary that evoke bigger things much more powerfully than if you had been writing about the big thing directly.” - Thomas Mallon
Terry Gross interviewed historical novelist Thomas Mallon about his 1980s diaries excerpted in The New Yorker and his historical novels. I think the whole interview is worth your time.
The Double Diary of George Eliot
I learned George Eliot kept a “double diary” while listening to Start the Week. But I’m not entirely clear what that means yet. Host Tom Sutcliffe mentioned George Eliot began her diary under the name Mary Ann Lewes and ended it under the name George Eliot. However, Claire Carlisle, the author of Marriage Question: George Eliots’s Double Life, seems to gently correct Sutcliffe: Eliot kept multiple entries under different names related to her different identities. This is a much more interesting alternative.
I quoted a passage about Patricia Highsmith’s double diary towards the bottom of this blog post.
Farm System
Ted takes note of the spectacular pace of Branch Rickey, a baseball player and GM from 1905-1965. Ted connects Rickey with the controversial pharma exec Arthur Sackler and then, astonishingly, to our innocent podcast.
Check Your Almanack
Take Note patrons: Field Notes has just announced that their spring release will ship on March 28. 🤫