Listen to Jim’s podcast:
http://redclaydiary.com/
or read his story below:
O WHAT FUN IT IS TO WRITE
I have this bumper sticker at the bookstore, O WHAT FUN IT IS TO WRITE.
This bumper sticker serves as a litmus test for the eyes of wandering customers. The slogan attracts certain browsers; others do not even notice it. Some lift the sticker, frown at it, don’t quite absorb the arrangement of words, replace it, cruise on to the next curiosity.
Now and then, a gazer brightens up, chuckles in delight, and asks, “Can I buy this?”
I wonder which visitor spends some of each day writing, which is entertaining the idea of writing but never gets around to it, which wants to learn what it takes to be a writer, which dismisses the entire idea of writing, which admires writers, which disdains the concept of writing for pleasure.
I don’t have to wonder for long, because folks often tell me exactly what they think about writing.
“I used to keep a diary, but I finally threw it away. It wasn’t any good.”
“I’d like to start writing someday. Maybe when I retire.”
“I know a lot of stories but I’m not a writer, so I guess they won’t get written.”
“You know, don’t you, that writing doesn’t matter anymore. Computers can do it for you.”
Once in a while, a customer will be ready, willing and able to stop, listen, maybe even learn something. That’s when I jump in with my gently avid rant about the importance of diaries.
The reason many people begin their writing life by keeping diaries, is that nobody will see what’s in the diary until the writer is ready. And diaries can come in so many forms! A Dollar Store blank book is just as easy to write in as a leatherbound gilt-edged volume with acid-free paper.
A diary is simply a Message in a Bottle.
Humans have been placing messages in bottles ever since they were, well, humans.
And even before there were bottles!
Cave dwellers wrote picture stories on walls thousands of years ago. Cuneiforms–messages in red clay–have been in use for just about that long.
Like many people who write in diaries, I am screaming silently to the ethos that I MATTER!
Like other diarists, I hope that somebody somewhere will someday connect with my words and find something meaningful in them.
When I squirrel away a diary, I am saying to its unknown finder, KILROY WAS HERE. Jim Reed once existed. Jim Reed wants you to know that you matter, too…your words matter…your life in words matters. Your diary is worth the effort.
I like to think that my writings will be placed safely deep in a bank of Alabama red clay (it’s everywhere!) and discovered by a better civilization thousands of years hence. They may still know what red clay is–they may even still have kudzu (it’s everywhere!) growing in the red clay! They may even take heart in learning that those of us who lived so long ago were human, too.
When my time capsule The Diary is opened, I hope these future folk will think kindly of us, will recognize the evidence that despite all our flaws as a species, there are among us some good, helpful and gentle people.
Perhaps they will be inspired to continue the long, arduous but hopefully rewarding trek toward the idea that it could be that humans are worth saving and cherishing after all
© 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast