Writers give a lot of reasons for keeping journals and notebooks. Thornton Wilder said he started a journal to get better control of his interests and “to harness his notions into paragraphs.”
He said he also wanted to create a habit and a relation between thinking and writing. As you might suspect, that line seems true to me.
This too was interesting: Wilder said he wanted “to collect from these records a reservoir of more codified ideas on which to base the judgments I am so often called upon for in conversation.” Good friends — friends who read and inquire and ask challenging questions — push you toward better habits of thinking.
• Source: The Journals of Thornton Wilder, 1939-1961; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987.
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