Every Day Is Special: September 22

September 22 – Dear Diary Day

Posted on September 22, 2013

In this day and age, most people are too busy typing quick quips on Twitter or crafting their online image with carefully worded status updates on Facebook to want to write in a diary.

But writing that is intensely private, writing that is intended to always stay private, is very different from tweets and other social media messaging. In a diary, you can pour your heart out, you can get really real, you can detail an upsetting dream, scribble sky-high hopes, explore your deepest fears.

A diary doesn't have to be an expensive, pretty book. It can be a grubby spiral-bound notebook—or, really, anything you can write on. You don't have to worry about handwriting, spelling, or grammar—you can just write write write.

Here are some diary-writing suggestions:

WikiHow suggests using an ordinary looking notebook like one you would use for school, so nobody will know that it is a diary. Don't tell people you have a diary, and don't write in it in front of them.

On the other hand, Remembary suggests that you write anywhere, anyhow—even on your phone. There are some good tips here about how to build a daily habit.

Here is a Pinterest board with lots of amazing ideas for art journals, travel journals, Mama and Me journals in which you write letters back and forth (and which you leave under bed pillows), and even a Rolodex scrapbook!