[blockwriter]

I write literary fiction and have kept a daily diary for the better part of my years spent writing. While the keeping of a diary was initially meant as a private practice, used only to begin my days in consideration of life before I began my fictional efforts, I eventually began to post excerpts from them regularly online and now do so on a twice monthly basis.

Every time I finish a notebook, I go back through it and write the subject of the passages on the cover. I also write the dates of passages I would like to revisit on an index card. When my schedule demands it, working over these passages for public consumption, sometimes days or weeks later, but often months or years later, I am often surprised to discover where the extrapolation of the initial idea leads me. In the moment, it would have been incredibly laborious to achieve the results that the benefit of hindsight, through the twin effects of memory and subconscious processes, makes easy.

I recommend it for all writers of literary works, but I think the process has merit in other domains as well.