The Pros and Cons of Journaling

Pro: You are writing something every day.

Con: You are not necessarily writing any fiction every day.

Pro: Your life has some legitimately funny moments in it.

Con: Your life is dull as dirt most of the time.

Pro: You'll have happy memories to look back on one day.

Con: Dropbox ate your happy memories.

Pro: You have a backup drive for your happy memories as well.

Con: Your happy memories just got leaked on 4chan.

Pro: No they didn't.

Con: People are laughing about the bit with the cat. And not in a good way.

Pro: You're just trying to bring me down.

Con: I think your pretentious little journal is doing that for me.

Pro: At least I'm doing something. When's the last time you did any work on the Dead Empire book?

Con: Worldbuilding is a slow, painstaking process.

Pro: And it's a lot slower when you never open your Scrivener file.

Con: Hey, fuck you buddy! I didn't bail on the book to write a story about a painting magician.

Pro: Well I can't twiddle my thumbs while you fuck around with the finer points of fantasy geography, now can I?

Con: Oh, yes, it's so helpful having you use up his headspace on a short story that's not going anywhere. Remember the one about the girl on the ceiling? How's that going?

Pro: I finished the first draft.

Con: Which you're not editing.

Pro: Pot and kettle, asshole.

Con: Fuck you!

Pro: Fuck you!

Scuffle, shots fired, sirens wailing.

Ahem. Sorry about that, the stream of consciousness took over.

Anyway, I've been doing a daily journal for the past month, roughly. Just details out of my day, occasionally a bit of a rant to let off steam. Lots of stuff about my son, naturally.

I'm not writing every day, although I am going back and filling in missing days when I slip up. I don't think I'm writing fiction any better or more often, but I don't think I'm doing worse on either of those fronts either. The most I can say is that I am writing something which I find valuable for its own sake on a regular basis.

Which is nice.