The great French diary theorist Philippe Lejeune calls diaries “life insurance.” Research shows that people who keep diaries actually live longer than those who do not.

can serve for our family (and for the world) as a record of our place and time.

can be a place to capture the beauty of the world.

can serve as a reservoir for our overflowing thoughts.

gives us a confidante-when we may need one-and can stave off loneliness.

allows one to possess one’s life more fully, for days are reprised and sifted through and reflected on as we write the entry-and then again and again when we reread our earlier diaries.

The diary can be the life raft through difficult waters-or the bridge over those waters

in its regularity, brings stability and continuity to a chaotic or challenging life.

The very act of journal-writing registers concern and respect for one’s self, life, feelings and experiences. Everyone-and especially aspiring writers-can do the same. Woolf used her diary as a practice ground for her public writing-and for all of the following uses as well. “The advantage of this method,” she wrote, “is that it sweeps up accidentally several stray matters which I should exclude if I hesitated but which are the diamonds of the dustheap.” This practice also allowed her to tap her subconscious.

I believe that during the past year I can trace some increase of ease in my professional writing which I attribute to my casual half hours after tea.”

Going at such a pace as I do I make the most direct & instant shots at my object. “The habit of writing thus for my own eye only is good practice,” she explained. She would record her life rapidly for about 15 or 20 minutes. Woolf used her diary as an exercise in non-stop free-writing. Some years Woolf wrote only 30 entries a year-that is, only two or three entries a month-but they vividly convey her Bloomsbury world and she found her diary very helpful. A periodic diary can more than convey a life. Woolf kept a periodic diary throughout her life, and the first lesson we can learn from her is that a diary does not have to be daily to be a diary. This is true of Leo Tolstoy and André Gide as well (whose diaries Woolf read).Ī diary, in short, can be a vital tool for writers.

In fact, I believe her published works would not exist without her diary. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, A Room of One’s Own-always exist in tandem with her semi-private diary. The great English writer and thinker Virginia Woolf kept a diary from age 14 until four days before her suicide in 1941. Written by Barbara Lounsberry, author of Becoming Virginia Woolf Virginia Woolf’s Modernist Path and Virginia Woolf, the War Without, the War Within.

A Writer's Diary by Virginia Woolf