"(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

The above quote is from Sylvia Plath. I am reading her journals, the ones edited by Ted Hughes. I am hardly an expert on Sylvia Plath and/or her complicated relationship with Ted Hughes (both before and after her death) but I do have opinions on journal writing.

Ted Hughes writes that this is her autobiography, to which I have to point out that a journal is not an autobiography. Certainly for me, I use my journal to let out emotion. It's intentionally unedited and without direction. It is written for me, with the idea the I will be the only person who reads it.

I've read a handful of famous journals and, while interesting, they tend to get boring and self-indulgent. This is not a swipe at the writer, because part of writing is editing. I'm not sure how much input (if at all) the journal writer had on the final product. One of the few journals that actually works is "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank but that was famously edited by the author (and her father) for publication. While she was in hiding, she heard an exiled member of the Dutch government announcing that after the war, he hoped to gather eye-witness accounts of the suffering of the Dutch people. Anne started editing after she heard this.

I love the idea of reading a journal and the raw words. But I also know that the original intention was not necessarily for public consumption. I suppose if you keep a journal, you should probably trust who takes care of it in the end.