Ten more years (1884-1893) of apostle George Q. Cannon’s journal were released yesterday on the Joseph Smith Papers website – a period that covers the worst years of The Raid to capture and imprison Mormon men who practiced plural marriage, putting wives and children on the stand to incriminate husbands and fathers, and sending them to prison if they refused. The era also covers the Manifesto, and the long-awaited dedication of the Salt Lake Temple.

All this makes me wonder – I haven’t yet explored the posted diary to discover this – whether George Q. Cannon followed his own advice in the Juvenile Instructor of 1878. ((The following article from 1 October is unsigned so I cannot state with certainty that GQC is the author, but as editor he was responsible for most of the Juvenile’s matter, and he certainly was qualified through experience to comment on journal-keeping.))

How to Keep a Journal

Autumn is as good a time as any for a boy or girl to begin to keep a journal. Too many have an idea that it is a hard and unprofitable task to keep a journal; and especially is this the case with those who have begun, but soon given up the experiment. They think it is a waste of time, and that no good results from it. But that depends upon the kind of journal that you keep. Everybody has heard of the boy who thought he would try to keep a diary. He bought a book, and wrote in it, for the first day, “Decided to keep a journal.” The next day he wrote, “Got up, washed, and went to bed.” The day after he wrote the same thing, and no wonder that at the end of a week he wrote, “Decided not to keep a journal,” and gave up the experiment.

It is such attempts as this, by persons who have no idea of what a journal is, or how to keep it, that discourage others from beginning. But it is not hard to keep a journal if you begin in the right way, and will use a little perseverance and patience. The time spent in writing in a journal is not wasted, by any means. It may be the best employed hour of any in the day, and a well-kept journal is a source of pleasure and advantage which more than repays the writer for the time and trouble spent upon it.

The first thing to do in beginning a journal is to resolve to stick to it. Don’t begin, and let the poor journal die in a week. A journal, or diary, should be written in every day, if possible. Now, don’t be frightened at this, for you do a great many things every day, and this is not a very awful condition. The time spent may be longer or shorter, according to the matter to be written up; but try and write, at least a little every day. “Nulla dies sine linea” – no day without a line – is a good motto. It is a great deal easier to write a little every day than to write up several days in one.

Do not get for a journal a book with the dates already printed in it. That kind will do very well for a merchant’s note-book, but not for the young man or woman who wants to keep a live, cheerful account of a happy and pleasant life. Sometimes you will have a picnic or excursion to write about, and will want to fill more space than the printed page allows. Buy a substantially bound blank-book, made of good paper; write your name and address plainly on the fly-leaf, and, if you choose, paste a calendar inside the cover. Set down the date at the head of the first page, thus: “Tuesday, October 1, 1878.” Then begin the record of the day, endeavoring as far as possible to mention the events in the correct order of time – morning, afternoon and evening. When this is done, write “Wednesday, October 2,” and you are ready for the record of the next day. It is well to set down the year at the top of each page.

But what are you to write about? First, the weather. Don’t forget this. Write, “Cold and windy,” or “Warm and bright,” as the case may be. It takes but a moment, and in a few years you will have a complete record of the weather, which will be found not only curious, but useful.

Then put down the letters you have received or written, and if you wish, any money paid or received. The day of beginning or leaving school; the studies you pursue; visits from or to your friends; picnics or sleigh-rides; the books you have read; and all such items of interest should be noted. Write anything that you want to remember. After trying this plan a short time, you will be surprised at the many things constantly occurring which you used to overlook, but which now form pleasant paragraphs in your book. But don’t try to write something when there is nothing to write. If there is only a line to be written, write that, and begin again next day.

Do not set down about people anything which you will not wish them to see. It is not likely that anyone will ver see your writing, but it is possible, so, always be careful about what you write. The Chinese say of a spoken word, that once let fall, it cannot be brought back by a chariot and six horses. Much more is this true of written words, and once out of your possession, there is no telling where they will go, or who will see them.

The best time to write in a journal is in the evening. Keep the book in your table-drawer, or on your desk, and, after supper, when the lamps are lighted, sit down and write your plain account of the day. Don’t try to write an ale and eloquent article, but simply give a statement of what you have seen or done during the day. For the first week or two after beginning a journal, the novelty of the thing will keep up your interest, and you will be anxious for the time to come when you can write your journal. But, after a while, it becomes tedious. Then is the time when you must persevere. Write something every day, and before long you will find that you are becoming so accustomed to it, that you would not willingly forgo it. After that, the way is plain, and the longer you live the more valuable and indispensable your journal will become.

But some practical young person asks: “What is the good of a journal?” There is very much. In the first place, it teaches habits of order and regularity. The boy or girl who every evening arranges the proceedings of the day in systematic order, and regularly writes them out, is not likely to be careless in other matters. It helps the memory. A person who keeps a journal naturally tries during the day to remember thins he sees, until he can write them down. Then the act of writing helps to still further fix the facts in his memory. the journal is a first-class teacher of penmanship. All boys and girls should take pride in having the pages of their journals as neat and handsome as possible. Compare one day’s writing with that of the one before, and try to improve every day. Keeping a journal cultivates habits of observation, correct and concise expression, and gives capital practice in composition, spelling, punctuation, and all the little things which go to make up a good letter-writer. So, one who keeps a journal is all the while learning to be a better penman and a better composer, with the advantage of writing original, historical and descriptive articles, instead of copying the printed letters and sentences of a writing-book.

But, best of all, a well-kept journal furnishes a continuous and complete family history, which is always interest, and often very useful. It is sometimes very convenient to have a daily record of the year, and the young journalist will often have occasion to refer to his account of things gone by. Perhaps, some evening, when the family are sitting and talking together, someone will ask, “What kind of weather did we have last winter?” or, “When was the picnic you were speaking of?” and the journal is referred to. But the pleasure of keeping a journal is itself no small reward. It is pleasant to exercise the faculty of writing history, and to think that you are taking the first step towards writing newspapers and books. The writer can practice on different kinds of style, and can make his journal a record, not only of events, but of his own progress as a thinker and writer.

People sometimes ask me what I like to find in a journal as a historian. Three things:

1. Use people’s full names. You don’t have to write “My older brother Mortimer Philip Snerdley the 3rd” every time you mention him, but do give full names of everyone at least once, and then occasionally thereafter. This will help the future historian know whether you mean your brother Mort, or your best friend Mort, or Mort, the man who rotates your tires.

2. Report your personal details, not necessarily the journalistic details. Imagine you are reading a journal about 9/11. You will be very disappointed, no matter how accurate the details are, if the journalist has merely recorded the facts that you can find in any history from that event – the time each tower fell, the side of the Pentagon that was hit, the bulletins issued by the government. You would really rather know how the diarist felt, what she was doing when she first heard the news, how he tried to reach his friend in Manhattan to be sure he was okay, a personal response to all the flags that suddenly appeared everywhere in town. Record the journalistic facts if you’re directly involved as an actor in such an event; otherwise, record your feelings, impressions, and personal responses.

3. Every once in a while, when you don’t have anything particular to record that day, write out in as much detail as you can the procedure for doing some of the most routine activities of your day: How do you fix breakfast? What is it like to drive a car on the freeway? What is involved in playing a pick-up game of basketball with the Elders’ quorum? Those things are going to change over time in unpredictable ways, and what is mind-numbingly routine for you will be fascinating to a future reader who lives in different times and circumstances. Everyone knows to save the valuable and rare things, whether those things are tangible goods or newsworthy events, but few people think to save the humble day-to-day things, sometimes making them incredibly rare in the future.