Recalling my life as a teenager, I’d usually write just before bed. I feel like at night you can really get the whole essence from your day, and put it down on paper. Surprisingly I found myself wanting to take as much time as possible for writing, however it usually took a maximum of only thirty minutes, in that span I would write about one page, or go just beyond it. At first I was very excited to write, it felt like a throw back to when I was young, but later it sort of blended in with my daily routine, and I found me constantly reminding myself that one last task of the day had to be done. It felt like a chore that I had to incorporate into my daily life, squeeze out some Netflix time from my routine. When I did write, however, I did it in a flow. I would have expected myself to stop in the middle and think about what to write, but there were hardly any pauses, once I started writing I could really feel myself pour my heart out. At times I would feel that my hands could not keep up with the speed my train of thought was going at. Writing a diary from the perspective of a studying mother was completely different than writing as a teenager. I was writing about more than friends and petty fights, I was writing about my children, my husband, what I had to cook or where I had to take them. It seemed like an outlet, for all the pent up emotion and bottled up frustration. I usually wrote sitting on my dinning table where I sit when I study.

Writers put themselves in different shoes in order to put zest into their writing, while putting a little bit of themselves into their work. I feel that journal writing is an outlet for them to write about what truly goes on and what state of mind they are in, at the same time it’s an inlet for people to get to know how the mind of this particular writer works, how they perceive and interpret things. For writers, themselves, a journal can help them understand their own selves better. It allows them to reread their thoughts from an outsider’s perspective. When we read about the greatly good or greatly terrible things done by people in the past, we get curious. Reading diaries or journals that belonged to these figures give a dissection of their minds, in the form of literature and writing. It shows writers what the workings of their minds were and how it was linked to their actions. Reading these scripts gives you a sense of getting to know these people on a personal level, without actually meeting them. Eighteenth century literature used letters, diaries and journals to make their characters more relatable. Reading a personal piece of writing from someone made them vulnerable to you, and in turn you found yourself relating to them more.