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Journals started off as a private record, think of Samuel Pepys, one of the earliest known journals written in code so other people could not read it. With the establishment of mass communications came the opportunity to share journals e.g. newspaper social diaries, television, video diaries. However it is only with the internet that there is an opportunity to share writing in real time.
Picture taken by vanhookc
It is so easy to share your writing using the web, with blogging sites e.g. WordPress, Blogger, article sites e.g. Ezine, Squidoo and fiction sites e.g. FanFiction, Fictionpress. In 2005, it was said a new blog was created every second, so people obviously like this method of sharing their writing. But can you write the same online, knowing it will be public as you can in a personal notebook or computer?
I’m sure some people can, but I can’t.
My online writing
My first blog was on Livejournal and I never worked out why I should write there as well as in a journal so it became a strange collection of updates and notifications from other sites. This may explain why I didn’t keep it for much longer than a year. I started a blog on productivity and goals in 2007 and most of the posts are on topics that I would not think about including in my journal. Last summer I kept a log of our summer holiday so my family could read how my 1.5 year old daughter found her first sailing trip, but kept a journal at the same time.
So I’ve had several years when I’ve kept a blog and a journal on similar topics, what does it tell me?
Comparison of online and personal writing
I’ve collected extracts from my blogs and journals which were written on the same day and the same topic.
