Tips for Budding Diary Writers

I have added this page at the bottom of the menu because it is not so much about me, or about the West Riding, as about me wishing to pass on tips to budding diary writers.

I became keen on writing at about the age of seven or eight in the 1940s long before the advent of the word processor. At St James’ Junior School we were positively encouraged to write what were known as ‘free compositions’. These were usually short pieces of prose on a topic written on the blackboard by Teacher. Even at Christ Church primary school, grammar, spelling, punctuation and handwriting all had to be of the highest standard otherwise marks would be deducted. In some ways the actual writing was the most difficult part of the exercise. There were no such things as ball-point pens; pencils were for drawing and were not permitted to be used for writing sentences. Fountain pens were not allowed because they were deemed to lead to bad habits! Steel nibs, ink pots and pencils were the only tools.

During World War 2 blotting paper, needed to soak up little accidents, was unobtainable. Little accidents happened either when the business end of the pen nib became crossed or broken due to too great a downward pressure being exerted on the page, or because excess ink had not been allowed to drain off the nib back into the inkwell before starting to write. It was absolutely amazing how much ink could be transferred to fingers and clothing within minutes of starting a writing task. Being appointed Ink Monitor for the day and having to visit every desk at the start of the morning filling up the individual inkwells was by far the messiest of all jobs.

Pencils were not entirely accident-free or healthy either. We often used a particular type of pencil called 'copying-ink pencils'. These produced purple letters, and smudges, on the paper. Small children, and even adults, had the bad habit of sucking pencils when I was very young. I'm not sure why we did it - probably as an aid to thinking! If you sucked a copying-ink pencil you soon had horrible purple stains over your mouth and face and all the fingers that came into contact with the soggy end. Inevitably fingers transferred the smudges to the paper and clothing. It was all very messy and undoubtedly unhygienic. The worst part was that the purple stains were extremely difficult to remove.

I always enjoyed the writing of ‘compositions’ and I was good at it. I wrote my first work of fiction, about 3,000 words long, when I was eleven years old. I signed up for my first, and only, professional writing course at age 19 but never persevered beyond the first two lessons because by then grammar, spelling, punctuation and style seemed second nature to me and I could not be bothered writing exercises for the tutors. The Regent Institute promised a return of all fees for uncompleted or unsuccessful courses but I never held them to that. My first articles for the media were published at about age 22, although we did not know the word media in those days.

My very first diary came as part of my 1947 Christmas presents. I can’t remember whether I asked for one or whether my parents made an inspired choice. Anyway, it was a Letts ‘School Boys Diary’. When my parents realised that the diary was a success, they bought me one for the next four years until I was no longer a ‘schoolboy’. They were beautifully bound leatherette-covered pocket books which contained all manner of facts and figures deemed to be useful for schoolboys. The 1948 edition, for example, provided several pages of tiny print giving copious advice on careers. There were nine pages of Latin irregular verbs, eight more for French verbs, and two for German strong verbs. The world maps at the end of the diary had great swathes of red indicating British colonies and possessions. Five pages were devoted to sporting records: athletics, badminton, men’s and women’s cricket, hockey, lawn and table tennis, rowing and squash, but no mention of football or either code of rugby. A section on ‘useful factors’ devoted four whole lines of tiny print to the expansion of (a³ + b³ + c³ -3abc) but I cannot for the life of me ever remember needing that. Then there were lists of the Seven Cardinal Virtues and of the Seven Mortal Sins. There was a rather odd section on using coins as weights. For example: a silver three-penny piece, which was only rarely found in one’s small change even in the 1940s, apparently weighed 21.8 grains; three pennies or five halfpennies weighed exactly one ounce Avoirdupois, which was in turn the equivalent of 437.5 grains. No schoolboy of the late 1940s could afford not to have that sort of information at their fingertips.

If you are a youngster reading this and thinking of starting a diary, let me first of all give you encouragement. Well-written personal diaries can provide endless hours of entertainment decades later, especially if your writings are truly honest. There is, however, no point in writing half truths, or missing out the embarrassing bits, or exaggerating mundane events. So, let me give you a few words of advice to avoid frustration when you read your diaries in old age.

Avoid the use of abbreviations, unless you explain them on first use, otherwise when you read the diary in later life you will have forgotten what they mean. When you write about people by name, make sure you include not just their surname, which was how we schoolboys always referred to each other, but their first name and any nicknames otherwise you will probably forget who you were writing about. Do not make entries such as ‘the usual sort of trouble today’ because decades later you will have no idea what the usual sort of trouble was. Nor is there any point in comments such as, ‘nothing much to write about today’. If there really is nothing much to write about don’t bother writing it!

Try to imagine what your entries will read like in times to come and make sure you flesh out details that you are likely to forget. If you are going to write really personal things, and they can be the best part of a diary, do make sure you have been truly honest with yourself. If you are economical with the truth, or if you include downright untruths or exaggerations, in years to come you will not be able to remember what was true and what was made up. Finally, and perhaps most important of all, do keep your diaries safe from prying eyes! Parents are not supposed to read their children’s diaries, and most will not unless invited, but do you want to take the risk?

In my first few diaries I made an entry every single day and I made every one of the mistakes I mentioned in the previous paragraphs at least once. I usually wrote my diary in bed where I assumed I had privacy and I used to hide it underneath my pillow - which was not the smartest place although I have no reason to suppose my parents ever read what I had written. Many of my earliest entries are now quite embarrassing, for their naïveté not for any other reason. Many are only of interest to me - and some are not even that interesting.

As the years passed and I became more experienced in writing, my diary jottings became longer and more adventurous. In one period I wrote what were probably the most interesting entries in a secret code. Sadly, I am no longer able to decode those entries. In the interests of adolescent confidentiality, and to frustrate possible parental snooping, I annotated many of the dates with strange hieroglyphics, which were no doubt very meaningful at the time but which mean absolutely nothing to me now nearly 60 years later. However, I can guess what the five stars alongside a date in late 1949, when I was barely 14 years old, mean.

I still have all my diaries. For some years there are long entries every single day, other years there are gaps for several weeks. There are even longer gaps during the years when I was engaged on Intelligence duties in the RAF. When I was a junior RAF officer I often used to say, ‘There’s no fun in having secrets if you can’t tell them to someone who isn’t supposed to know them’ and ‘secrets by and large are pretty boring.’ In fact, when I served as an RAF Personnel Officer in the mid-1960s, I discovered that the blue-backed Staff-in-Confidence files, which contained choice personal details of individuals, were far more interesting on the whole than the dark-red Top Secret files. Unlike some well-known diary-writers selling their efforts in 2008, I never recorded any classified material in my diaries. Sad but true.