Writers who keep and study diaries

 Barbara Lounsberry, who taught at Northern Iowa, has written books about Virginia Woolf’s diaries. 

Some items from Lounsdberry’s account:

• Woolf was a writer of diaries, but she also was a reader. She read many. She studied Pepys.

• She wrote diaries — note the plural. Each had a purpose. The diaries of her reading are famous. She also kept a diary of her observations of nature.

• She sometimes argued with other diarists, though separated by centuries.

• She used her diaries to experiment with voice.

I think keeping a diary, journal or commonplace book would help most people who are or want to be writers.

• Source and notes: I was introduced to Lounsberry’s work by Colin Dickey’s review “A Series of Selves” in The New Republic, Jan. 20, 2019. It’s here:

https://newrepublic.com/article/152871/series-selves-virginia-woolf-diaries

Virginia Woolf’s diaries have been mentioned more than once in this collection of notes, which I can’t bring myself to call a blog. I think it’s a journal. Since the notes are posted daily it might be a diary.