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Posted: |
May 11, 2014 - 9:56 AM
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By: |
Graham Watt
(Member)
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I've got sporadic diaries going back to when I was 11 years old. Here's the entry for May 11 1973 - 41 years ago today!
"I posted off a postal order for one pound fifteen pence to join the Christopher Lee International Club. Great, great, double great and triple great."
Not really very deep in the way you mention, dan, but there's no doubting my youthful enthusiasm! I find these things very evocative, and a useful tool for precise chronology. Perfect for refuting people's claims about what they "remember" me doing - like "Oh Graham was weird. He joined Christopher Lee's fan club when he was about four", and I'll get out my jotter and say, "No, I was 11 and a half". Actually, that IS weird!
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zooba: Re: I've kept a personal journal at times throughout my life starting in 1973 when I went to Italy with Parents and sister. I was 16 years old. And then in 1976 after being encouraged by an acting teacher in College, I started keeping them again. After that my journals were mostly for my years in L.A. 1984 - 2003. I still keep a journal almost daily and when I do a theatrical show detailing the production progress ala Charlton Heston's journals. I'd also make lists of things, like favorite movies and film scores and composers etc.
In one of my L.A. Journals back in the late 80's - early 90's I started collecting actor friends 8 x 10's and just photos of friends/girlfriends I met and worked with. I made a somewhat shrunken down photo copy of the photo and placed it in my journals, that were at that time those sort of smaller 6 x 9 lined notebooks that had the black and white covers. So I'd have the photo of the person and under it I would write or type a paragraph or two about the person and what I remember about them. How we met or things that stuck out about this person in my life. I did this also with famous people I met in the entertainment and movie and TV industry as well. Really fun to do and brings back great memories of a time of adventure in your life. I called the whole section in that one journal "The People of My Life".
A lot of my journals of my youthful days really crack me up now. I can really see how my mind grew and what silly things that were important to me back then, now just seem so crazy and stupid. Memories of old girlfriends and relationships and situations at work. Great fun. I always thought, what would I do with them when I got older and would I ever let anyone see my personal journals? Would I burn them before the end? I'm sure if people found them after I'm gone, they'd have a few chuckles and a lot of surprises.
Great topic Dan the Man! Thanks for letting me share! I encourage journal writing and list keeping whole heartedly.
I have fastidiously kept a journal since 1972 and long hoped to turn it into a book. In the mid 1970s I took several autobiographical writing and journalism classes at UCLA, all with that book in mind. Jump forward to 1993 when I took some practical writing workshops out of a little theatre in Santa Monica, which morphed into later versions of the same class in Venice. It was then that I learned how tortured so much of my journal text was, and it was very helpful to get immediate feedback from other writers who were participating, and I even combined 2 of those spontaneous pieces and read them to a full house at the Santa Monica theatre that sponsored the first of those workshops and was thrilled by the reaction I received. (I often write with a very candid and self-deprecating humor.) When I retired at the end of March 2013 my principal focus was supposed to be turning all those stories into an eBook, but, so far, I've hardly touched it. Indeed, even the journal writing has taken a hit over these nearly 14 months, although writing is something I HAVE to do -- it's my sanctuary and remains a source of pride. I've told young people who have dreams of becoming a writer to keep a pad and pen handy and to never stop writing, because it's an important learning experience that can pay dividends later.
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