Today is the Second Anniversary of the ^zhurnal project. Looking back through the first dozen volumes I see many inadvertent howlers ... some embarrassing failures ... but also a few items that I'm happy I struggled to compose and save here. To encourage erstwhile journalizers, in the little book Mental Efficiency (published in 1911, but serialized in a newspaper a few years earlier) under "Mental Calisthenics" Arnold Bennett offered some advice:
This brings me to the department of writing. I am a writer by profession; but I do not think I have any prejudices in favour of the exercise of writing. Indeed, I say to myself every morning that if there is one exercise in the world which I hate, it is the exercise of writing. But I must assert that in my opinion the exercise of writing is an indispensable part of any genuine effort towards mental efficiency. I don't care much what you write, so long as you compose sentences and achieve continuity. There are forty ways of writing in an unprofessional manner, and they are all good. You may keep "a full diary," as Mr. Arthur Christopher Benson says he does. This is one of the least good ways. Diaries, save in experienced hands like those of Mr. Benson, are apt to get themselves done with the very minimum of mental effort. They also tend to an exaggeration of egotism, and if they are left lying about they tend to strife. Further, one never knows when one may not be compelled to produce them in a court of law. A journal is better. Do not ask me to define the difference between a journal and a diary. I will not and I cannot. It is a difference that one feels instinctively. A diary treats exclusively of one's self and one's doings; a journal roams wider, and notes whatever one has observed of interest. A diary relates that one had lobster mayonnaise for dinner and rose the next morning with a headache, doubtless attributable to mental strain. A journal relates that Mrs. ----—, whom one took into dinner, had brown eyes, and an agreeable trick of throwing back her head after asking a question, and gives her account of her husband's strange adventures in Colorado, etc. A diary is
All I, I, I, I, itself I
(to quote a line of the transcendental poetry of Mary Baker G. Eddy). A journal is the large spectacle of life. A journal may be special or general. I know a man who keeps a journal of all cases of current superstition which he actually encounters. He began it without the slightest suspicion that he was beginning a document of astounding interest and real scientific value; but such was the fact. In default of a diary or a journal, one may write essays (provided one has the moral courage); or one may simply make notes on the book one reads. Or one may construct anthologies of passages which have made an individual and particular appeal to one's tastes. Anthology construction is one of the pleasantest hobbies that a person who is not mad about golf and bridge — that is to say, a thinking person — can possibly have; and I recommend it to those who, discreetly mistrusting their power to keep up a fast pace from start to finish, are anxious to begin their intellectual course gently and mildly. In any event, writing — the act of writing — is vital to almost any scheme. I would say it was vital to every scheme, without exception, were I not sure that some kind correspondent would instantly point out a scheme to which writing was obviously not vital.
Some other candidate psychoexercises from the same Arnold Bennett essay:
- meditate for ten minutes daily
- memorize 20 lines of good poetry or prose a week
- read interesting, well-written books in some area of literature or science, concentrating on a topic for several years
Different disciplines for different people ... all fine ways to develop mental muscles.
(See ^zhurnal 4 April 2000, AnnalsOfJournals, for other musings on journalizing, posted on the First Anniversary of this experiment, and 19 March 2001, DearDiary, for an Arnold Bennett comment on diaries.)
Wednesday, April 04, 2001 at 20:51:30 (EDT) = 2001-04-04
TopicBennett - TopicJournalizing - TopicZhurnal - TopicThinking
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