Nobody Knows Anything

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Why Web Journals Suck

Table of Contents

Introduction, Or Why I’ve Written This

I began my journal in June of 1996. At that time, there were perhaps 20 journals online. I’ve loved journals and journaling and put up an entire essay1 on the topic — there are tons and tons of ways to keep a journal. That page was then and still is now one of the most comprehensive guides to paper journaling online. (There are now others: Diarist.Net and Metajournals, to name but two.)

Today there are several hundred journals online, with more being added every day. At first it was great: I met a lot of great people and read lots of great writing. But now journaling is what someone does with a web page when they can’t think of anything else to do.

Why have I written this essay? Why am I putting my thoughts together on what is (obviously) a very personal and subjective experience? For a couple of reasons:

  1. I like online journals and I want to help them thrive by pointing out what works and what brings one reader back again and again.
  2. I want to point out some flaws that mar some otherwise deserving journals.
  3. I want to stop this trend of people putting up a web journal when they haven’t thought through what keeping a public journal means.

  4. I have an ego the size of a planet.

By deserving journal I mean deserving of being read.

“But!” I hear you cry. “But these are journals! Diaries! People’s innermost thoughts! They shouldn’t be critiqued by bourgeois literary standards.”

Then hey: keep the journals off the airwaves. Putting them on the Web is publishing them (and falls under all current and international publishing and copyright laws), and publications have benchmarks.

My analysis of the online journals and what the authors should consider depends on one major premise:

The author has put them on the Web for an audience.

If you don’t care about having readers and you could care less whether visitors ever return to your site, my words probably won’t mean anything to you.

But if you check your access logs occasionally or keep a visitor counter, you’re lying.

(The only exception to this rule I accept is if you keep a journal on the web as a way of keeping in contact with friends: sort of a private collection of letters. In this case, you should

  1. keep the URL secret,
  2. keep the journal password-protected, and
  3. avoid talking about the journal entirely with people not on the list of acceptable readers.

(To do anything else and yet insist your journal is private and not for readers is disingenuous at best.)

Danger, Will Robinson: Why You Might Not Want To Keep An Online Journal

Which brings me to an important question, one you have to ask yourself before embarking on keeping a web journal:

Why are you doing this?

I really wish more people would ask this before they start. The answer to this question might stop more of these journals before they start.

Depending on what information you make available, people can learn an awful lot about you. And you might be saying a lot about people other than yourself, people who might not appreciate your saying anything about them they haven’t expressly permitted. You will piss people off — this is just about the only guarantee I can give you about online journals.

When I started The Paperwork2, I envisioned it as a series of letters to friends back home to keep them up on what I was doing while I was down in Los Angeles. I decided what I would and wouldn’t put in it, and for the most part I’ve stuck to it: I would talk about what I did during the day, if I was likely to mention other people in passing I asked their permission, and if I had something to write that was bad or possibly deleterious to someone’s character, I either didn’t include it or I used a pseudonym.

There have been times when I’ve wanted to write something and I haven’t because it’s too personal, or it’s someone else’s story, or whatever. But it’s tough. There are no easy answers.

There are some pretty decent guidelines:

  1. DON’T put incredibly revealing information about yourself on the Net unless you are comfortable with hundreds or thousands of people knowing exactly where you live or what your phone number is or when you’re going to be out of town. I mean: DUH.
  2. If you put a disclaimer on your pages like, “Friends and family: stay out, this is private,” you have just put a big “You better read this!” on your page.
  3. If you put something up about friends or loved ones or people you can’t stand, accept ahead of time that they will find it. If you say something the least bit critical you will catch hell until the end of eternity for it. (This is true, actually, of all of your writing.)

  4. If you have a honest (read: racy, neurotic, sexy, drug-addled, whatever) journal, you will get lots of readers. You will also get other journalers talking about you in their journals, not always kindly. You will also get lots of fans, though they might just be there for the prurient value.

For an idea of exactly how difficult keeping an online journal can be, and what some of the pitfalls are, here are some statements by writers who have come up against the wall and had to rethink what they were doing — in some cases, they stopped writing their journals altogether. Please read these and think before you write.

…But when did I stop talking to you and start talking at you? When did it shift from reflection to a sometimes insufferably shallow
performance? More and more I put upon myself the burden of trying to
entertain you. Sometimes I resented that burden (though it only existed
in my mind), and more and more I felt I was coming to you only to make a
deposit, rather than making an investment…

Ophelia, oZ Diary, February 12, 19973

…The truth is that for the past few weeks I’ve dreaded sitting down in
front of the computer to write.

Because there was so much I wanted to say but couldn’t. So many
things going on that had to be kept “private” and that bugs the hell out
of me.

  1. The loss of anonymity. Face it, it’s a fact of life. This thing has gotten too big and too many people in my everyday life now know about it.

  2. Time. Then there is the time constraints – a lesser reason but one just the same. Any evening that I’m not spending here working on web stuff means I’m off doing something else. Lately it’s been working on photography but it also means going out to clubs (and actually having a social life) and taking care of things around the house that I’ve been neglecting.

  3. The Creep Factor. Nothing like being in a club and having a guy come up to you and say “hey, I’ve seen you naked.” Don’t get me wrong, I am proud of what I do and that’s why I have my photos posted… but as the hits increase it has become painfully obvious that the majority of the population does not look at what I do as “art” but “naked babes.” And I’d rather them not know every single detail about me and my life…

— Tracy Lee, i am becoming, February 17, 19973

…I’m going about this the wrong way. I could, maybe, switch gears at
this point and go back to the saccharine crap I was writing a year ago.
I can’t. It’s not me anymore. What’s going on with me right now is
something I can’t ignore, I can’t set aside, I can’t drive around.

What’s going on with me right now should also be none of anyone’s
business but my own and that of the people involved. Meaning I have no
business writing about it here. None whatsoever. Which is why this has
to stop…

— Maggy, Maggy’s World, February 8, 19973

…Anyway, in the beginning I wrote what I wanted, plain and simple.
As the diary, and the people who knew about it grew, so did my
responsibilities in keeping it. “Better than Melrose Place” someone once
wrote, but see, this isn’t Melrose Place. My life is real, and as such,
I’ve gotta leave some stuff out of the diary so that it’ll be my life
and so that my life is still worth living.

See, at first, almost everyone thinks the diary’s koool when their
name appears in it. They, in turn, tell their friends to check it out.
But as time goes on, if I continue to know this someone, sooner or
later, something less than perfect happens between me and that person. I
write about this not-so-wonderful event, but now all their
friends/office workers/etc. are reading it. Not a pretty picture…

— Justin, My Life, March 9, 19973

…No more entries for awhile. After maintaining Tangents for a year, I
want to step back for a period and take a look at my life (always so
visual) without feeling compelled to record my thoughts and actions.
Right now I do feel compelled to write. Therefore the legendary (to me)
self-control mode is being activated…

— Ubiety, Tangents, March 13, 1997

…The very idea of writing an entry today has left me with that feeling again — that “showing the world my panties” feeling. I don’t like it. Not one bit.

And my reason for keeping this journal has been to find my voice.
It has served that purpose well. But now, well….now I feel that my
reasons are chaining. Or perhaps that need isn’t being fulfilled
anymore. I don’t know for certain…

— Jackie, Estrogen, March 14, 1997

Now, some of these people went back to writing their journal, and some did not. In fact, Tracy’s site is entirely gone now.

But writing a journal can and has spiraled out of control. THINK before you DO.

Where To Begin

Okay, so you’re determined to do this web journaling thing. Fine.

I wrote “Why Web Journals Suck” because I was inspired by CJ Silverio’s essay “Why the Web Sucks.” If you haven’t read it, go read it; it is as timely now as when she wrote the first draft.

One of the best of journaling-about-journaling has been Tracing’s essay on “I like it when you do that” about her faves and peeves among journaling habits and her journal entry on the subject.

But this is one of the few places where you can go to see what it takes to survive (and flourish) in the art form known as online journaling. So sit down and read this, ‘kay?

Elements Of Excellent And Good Journals

Periodically I take a spin through the denizens of Open Pages, a large collection of journals whose membership list seems to be continually growing. My tour reminded me of two things: why I am so excited by the online journaling movement, and why as a whole web journals suck.

I used to say, “Only a few of the web journals are irredeemable wastes of electrons and disk space.”

I take that back. Most of them are. I don’t know why their authors have put them up there. After a discussion with a friend I came to the conclusion that when people get a web page they decide the first thing they’re going to do is put up a journal. This impulse should be hunted down and destroyed; if we have to put additives in the drinking water, so be it.

Many online journals are mixtures of the successful and the disappointing. A few are almost uniformly excellent and I bow before the authors’ talents. And the vast majority at this point are irredeemable dreck.

No, I’m not naming names; you think I’m an idiot?

Let’s start with the good ones, so you can get a feel for what I mean. Four qualities of what I term “excellent” or “good” journals stand out:

  1. content
  2. writing style
  3. visual style
  4. audience awareness

Any “good” journal excels in one of the first two categories and has a good sense of the third and fourth. An “excellent” journal stands out in all four categories. (By the way, I thought there were several journals that had incredible visual style but sucked anyhow because they lacked elements 1 or 2.)

Why are these important? Because you’re writing for an audience. You want to attract the audience and once they’re there, keep them there. Everyone’s method of doing this is different, but these elements are key to success.

Content

Forget whatever you might have learned during the Eighties: Style is not content, content is content.

What the content is

The content of your online journal is your life. You are writing your autobiography as it happens. Keep in mind the questions any good journalist asks when writing a newspaper story.

  • who: Describe who’s there. For repeat players, you may want to keep a list of names and a short bio of each person around to make new visitors familiar with who these people are. If you don’t want to do that, give the reader some idea of who this person is to you — how do you feel about them? Why are you mentioning this person in your autobiography?
  • what: What happened? Be specific. Detail, detail, detail. It may be incredibly clear to you how Safeway was ridiculously cold and the floor was so waxy you couldn’t walk straight, but your readers don’t know it. (And trust me, someone who’s kept journals for years, you won’t remember after a little while either.)
  • where and when: What’s the place? Where you proposed to your wife or the same intersection where you had that fender-bender or what?

  • why: Why are you telling this story? What does it mean to you? How did you feel? Again, be specific. Even if you’re just recording the meaningless details of your life, record them for a reason. Record them with zest.

The single most annoying thing in any online journal — and there is quite a bit of competition for this honor — is the line

Well, something happened today, and it’s really major and important in my life, but I can’t talk about it.

If you don’t have anything to say, don’t say anything.

How recent the content is

Because your life is in progress, and you are letting us in on it…keep us interested. UPDATE YOUR JOURNAL. A note every few days or so to let us know our involvement in your story is worth the effort. Because if we come back once and there’s no new entry…well, perhaps we just missed a day. If we come back twice and there’s no new entry, we’re going to think you’ve abandoned your journal and we’re going to move on to someone new.

Folks, there are now hundreds of journals to choose from. Give us a reason to stop by twice.

Keeping current will be worth it to you too, I promise, especially if your online journal is your only journal: not only the daily (or every-so-often) ritual of thinking about your life, but the discipline of translating it into words. You learn you can create on demand, even if the Muse isn’t howling in your ear.

Writing style

Hey, you don’t have to be Hemingway. Or Capote. Or Shakespeare, Ludlum, or Rice. You can imitate another writer if you like, or be a fantastic original. What is style?

You do need to work on readability.

Back to the audience and the care and feeding thereof: we need to understand what you’re saying. It is absolutely true you will become a better writer with practice, but it has to be conscious practice. You have to put some thought and some desire into the process.

Otherwise, you are publishing page after page of your life, but the writing is either too hard-to-read, or too incomprehensible and your audience is going to give up.

Simple writing is best. Subject, verb, object.

(And use a damn spelling checker. Every single word processing and HTML writing program comes with them now.)

Visual style

Web journals generally have two levels of information presentation: the cover page, where visitors enter the journal, and the entry page. Some journals have one day per entry page; some keep multiple entries per page.

Cover page

Look at the cover pages of several journals out there. What catches your eye? What do and don’t you like? What kind of judgement do you make about the journal immediately?

Regardless of the style that appeals to you, there’s some information you should consider making available on your cover page:

  • latest entry: Make it easy for your audience to see there’s a new entry. Whether it’s a Javascripted song-and-dance highlighting a link to the latest entry or just another link in a list of entries for the month, a link to the current entry as early as possible in the process is important.

  • archives: If a reader discovers your journal and thinks the recent entries are wonderful, he or she is going to want to read all the entries. Make as many of your previous entries available as possible.

  • a “look”: Design some kind of look for your journal, so that visitors know where they are without having to search for clues.

Entry page

The bare minimum for a diary entry is a date. I think there are few more requirements for a diary entry on the Web, however.

  • navigation links: Provide a simple way of moving between entries, and between an entry and the cover page. Readers like to turn page. It’s truly annoying to have to return continually to the cover page in order to move to the next entry or the previous entry. (Lack of navigation links is the number one killer for me of an otherwise readable journal.)
  • a simple, eye-friendly design: Compare the appearances of several different types of pages. What makes a page readable?
    • The font: a serif font, such as Times, Palatino, or Garamond is easier to read than a sans-serif (or smooth edge) font such as Arial or Helvetica. There’s a reason books are printed in serif fonts.

      I’ve been challenged on the font issue, by the way, particularly by readers coming from Lance’s Glassdog site. Lance is an advocate of sans-serif over serif fonts on the Web, because of the dpi of a computer screen. I continue to disagree—I still think serif is easier to read, but Lance’s site is chock-a-block with good design info, so go there and find out more.

    • The font size: don’t put <small/small> around your entire entry unless you want to go unread. If anything, make the size larger than the visitor’s default point size. Writing entries in 10-point Helvetica/Arial seems to be a rage recently. STOP IT.
    • The font color/page color or background: Choose black <font $000000> on white <body bgcolor $FFFFFF>. Deviate from this at your own risk. There are successful non-standard pairings — but more often unsuccessful ones. Red writing on a pink background? Teeny tiny writing that goes on for dozens of lines? Yuck. Repeat: yuck.

    • Paragraph breaks: There are two major schools of thought here — use blank lines between paragraphs (the HTML <p> method) or the David Siegel method of using paragraph breaks and indentations. I don’t care which one you use; just use one. Nothing discourages a reader more than being faced with an unending block of text.

If you keep more than one entry per page, please be aware of the drawbacks of this approach.

  • Large pages, even pages filled mainly by text, take a long time to load.
  • Consider putting links at the top of the page to the individual entries that are on the page. This way, readers can tell at a glance how many entries they might have missed, as well as provide overall navigation for the page.
  • If you put newest entries at the top of the page, put in plenty of navigation links in order to move to the top of the page and to the next day’s entry. Without that, readers will have either have to return to the top of the page to find a link to the next entry or scroll around looking for the beginning to the next entry. (Remember, scrolling back means passing the entire entry they just finished, plus the entire entry for the next day they still want to read.)

Awareness of the intended audience

I contend that if you put your journal on the Web, you are doing so for other people to read it. Otherwise, why not just keep it in a notebook under your bed? The Web is a publishing forum, for the public.

If you put a journal up, give some thought as to who will be reading it. Or, more specifically, who you want to be reading it. (To use myself as an example, I started my journal as a series of letters to friends back home.) You may have in mind your family, your friends, posterity, or Santa Claus. Any and all of these are just fine—just acknowledge to yourself that these are the people you expect to be reading it.

Know that if you keep going with your journal for some time and you develop a constant readership, strangers will read your journal. And some of these strangers will give you feedback, both good and bad, on your intimate, personal writings.

The best journals keep doing what the writer intended anyhow, no matter what anyone outside the intended audience says.

Bad journals change what they’re doing to pander to an audience they were never intended for.

Also know that if there is anyone who should not read your journal, he or she will find it and read it. This is a guarantee, no matter how many obscure URLs or funny pseudonyms you use to hide the journal or its contents. Be prepared for the criticism.

What You Shouldn’t Do

I include this section only because I’ve been around the online journaling scene for a very long time.

A. Very. Long. Time.

Journalers like to get together and they like to gab about what they do. (They also like to gab about everything under the sun. Get over it.)

Here are some topics that come up time and time again in packs of journalers, and they get old. So if I can do anything to head these particular mires off at the pass, let me do so now.

Complaints No One Wants To Hear

  • “How dare you criticize anyone’s journal?”
    This is periodically said belligerently by someone who is actually fearful that vaguely worded criticism, such as this essay’s “(most) web journals are irredeemable wastes of electrons and disk space,” is directed squarely at them. I always want to ask the person, “Why do you think that criticism is referring to you?” I think it says more about their attitudes than it does about the criticism.

    Get used to the idea that there are standards. They might not be your standards. But they are for someone. There are baselines—I, for instance, cannot read a journal that has tons of misspellings in it. Usually bad spellers know they are bad spellers; even the most basic word processors come with spell checkers; to continue to have bad spelling is a mark of a bad writer. For me.

    The argument that “We’re all equal” is continually put forth, and I continually think it’s hogwash: if all things are equal, then everything is crap.

  • “What do I write about?”
    Well, Christ. It’s your journal, you tell us. The best way I’ve seen this put (I think Buck of The Meyhem Project said this first): “What is your why?” If you don’t know what you should write about, you have a bigger problem on your hands. Why are you keeping a journal? If it’s just to keep a journal, do something else—keeping a journal requires a lot of time and work and just enough inspiration to keep at it day after day.

  • “I want more hits/bigger audience/more recognition.”
    Why?

    Do you want it as validation that you’re a good writer? Or validation that you’re a Big Name? Do you see your online journal as some path to fame and fortune? This is a fruitless quest: there’s always someone who has a higher hit count, and pursuit of more hits always leads to pandering.

    However, if you’re determined, here are 3 ways of increasing your hit count:

    • Get to know some of the journalers who do have big hit counts. You can do this by dropping them a line, telling them how much you enjoy their journal—but only do this if you’re sincere and really like their journal. If you begin a correspondence with such a journaler, you can mention your own journal, and if said journaler visits your page and enjoys it, perhaps you will get a mention in the big hit count journal. This will send lots of new readers your way.

      (Note: this works in just about any endeavor you can think of, by the way.)

    • Write about tons of salacious things, such as your sex life with various members of various genders and your use of various drugs. Word will spread like wildfire about your journal. And you’ll probably get mentioned in a fair number of other journals, while you’re at it.
    • Keep a really good journal. Word will get out, perhaps slowly, but it’ll get out.

    Once you get those new readers, by the way, it’s up to you to keep them. Never forget that.

  • “There’s a journaling clique.”
    Oft followed by “and they’re persecuting me” or “and I want to be one of them.”

    As a longtime member in good standing with the Online Journaling Junta, I can positively say, there is no online journaling clique.

    That was a joke: feel free to laugh.

    Periodically someone on the diary-l mailing list will refer to the Major Journalers and ask why the lesser journals aren’t better known. There is often a feeling there must be some conspiracy afoot to keep three or four journals on everyone’s Must Read list and keep everyone else underfoot.

    Two things to keep in mind:

    1. this complaint is as old as the start of the journaling scene;
    2. the list of those considered to be Major Journalers changes drastically every 6 months.

    Lots of the journalers who’ve been around for a while do know one another—they’ve seen one another’s names around, they’ve probably exchanged e-mail, they’re probably fans of one another’s journals. This is radically different from a clique, however.

Star Power: When They Really, Really Like You

Okay, you’ve started a journal, you’re doing it every day, and, best of all, people are reading what you’re writing. You know people are writing when they send you e-mail to say hi or to comment on something you’ve written.

In the real world, statisticians estimate every letter received—whether by a network about a cancelled show or by a congressperson about some legislation—stands for some number of constituents. Usually it’s estimated at between 10 and 50, depending on the situation. Despite the easy access e-mail affords, I think it’s reasonable to assume every piece of e-mail you receive stands for some number of readers as well.

It’s always flattering when someone takes the time to send you mail, whether it’s fan mail or hate mail. Someone’s taken the time out of their day to write to you, usually about you or something you’ve written. It’s all about you, and that’s quite an ego boost, even to the most jaded of us. One of the fun things about being a star is the part where you get to the be in the spotlight.

So: people are writing you. You have to respond, right?

No, you don’t.

Never forget that.

You give a lot of yourself if you keep an online journal. If you put up a web page, you’re giving a lot; with something as personal as an online journal, you’re giving the reader a lot more than anyone has the right to expect from anyone, most especially a total stranger. You don’t have to give them anymore.

If it’s no great burden to you to respond to e-mail and you feel like responding, go ahead. But don’t feel you have to reply.

Especially when, as is common, the person writing is doing so to offer you advice, to tell you how you’re screwing up your life, to tell you what a jerk you are, or whatever. Most of this mail is actually well-meant and reads as though the letter writer were communicating with a close friend, because in the letter writer’s mind he or she is communicating with a close friend: you.

What the letter writer doesn’t realize is, you haven’t a clue as to who he or she is. If you feel the need to explain this disparity in how the two of you view the relationship, do so gently…the first time. If the writer persists, ignore them—don’t tell them to fuck off, because that will simply escalate the interaction.

Another thing your letter writers won’t realize is that they are blithely commenting on your life—not some short story you’ve written up. You won’t believe this until it happens, and I haven’t yet found a good way of saying, politely, Hey, go live your own life.

Some general advice:

  • Don’t respond to hate mail/ad hominem attacks/criticisms of your journal in kind. Especially if you want to make sure the other person doesn’t get the last word, because the person who sent you that note knows they were being mean and vicious and won’t give up until they have the last word and they’ve gotten a rise out of you.

    A very short

    Thank you for your comments. I’ll give them the attention they deserve.

    in response should do the trick. This will piss them off more than any Defcon 5 response you might have given will.

  • If someone writes and says, “Hey, you owe me,” whether it’s your time or a reply or analysis of whatever situation he or she finds him- or herself in, remind yourself you don’t owe anybody anything—you don’t owe them a reply, much less a timely, prompt reply. You are not obligated to enter into a dialogue with anyone if you don’t want to.

  • If someone becomes overly involved with you—writing about each and everything you post—do not engage with him or her any further. The person will get bored and eventually leave you alone.

When you expose yourself to the world, you are opening yourself up to meeting a lot of new people, of whom there are basically three types:

  1. friendly, like-minded people;
  2. people writing in response to something you’ve said, usually to share their own stories; and
  3. people who think the two of you should become really close friends, and will pursue that avenue aggressively.

Many of the people who write you will be very nice and fun to correspond with and even to meet in real life. You find other people who’ve gone through the things you have, or who are in the same field as you, or also have three children, or whatever. You can meet people with similar interests.

You are also opening yourself up to a lot of (usually) lonely people, who see in your writing a direct communication to their lives. And naturally they want to share with you too. Which is okay and very human, but remember what they’re saying is as much about them as it is about you. Something you’ve written may have triggered their message, but what they’re telling you comes from their lives, from their point of view, is colored by their existence.

For example: in early 1998 I went on a liquid diet. I did a lot of research beforehand and knew what I was doing. I reported on the progress of said diet and my research in foods and exercise. Nevertheless, I got a lot of mail from people who had been on one kind of a diet or another, most of whom had failed, and all of whom wanted to tell me I was doing the wrong thing. Those messages weren’t about me and what I was doing. And I had to remind myself of that, because otherwise my knee-jerk response would have been, “Fuck off.” Which is neither polite nor helpful.

Then there are the people who get really involved with you. Who think your journal is just for them. Who want to become involved in your life, perhaps to the point of hanging out in the places where you mention you hang out. Or traveling to see you. It might be flattering…or it might be scary for you. It definitely can be dangerous.

A book I cannot recommend highly enough is The Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker, a world-famous security expert who’s dealt with plenty of bad, even life-threatening situations. One of the basic tenets of the book is: Listen to your gut.

If you don’t want to become friends with someone who thinks the two of you really, really, really should become friends, notify someone. Make copies of the e-mails. If your city’s police department has a stalking unit, call them and ask for advice. (Los Angeles has one of the premier stalking units in the country, because of the high concentration of celebrities, and those who want to become friends with celebrities.) You might have to stop your journal—some writers have.

There’s no reason why you should have to fear for your life. Get help. Do what makes you feel comfortable, not what someone who doesn’t believe you’re in danger or you should have to rearrange your life because someone’s making you afraid. Get informed, and learn how to handle the darker situations before they escalate.

Types of Journals

In some of my nastier moments, I dropped various journals I ran across into one of several categories, usually disparagingly and always to pigeonhole them. Here’s my set of categories:

  • The Good Ones: My favorites, the ones I read every day. I don’t see any elements common to all of these journals, other than
    • good writing—the author cares about the reader’s comprehension.
    • fairly frequent updates—the author cares enough to keep at it, instead of showing up only periodically.

    • interest in what they’re writing about—it doesn’t have to be a topic that would normally interest me; these writers make me interested.
  • The Guilty Pleasures: The ones I keep reading, mainly for their car crash qualities. You want to look away, but you just can’t. “Doesn’t that person know how self-centered and stupid they’re being? Are they really going to do such-and-such again?”
  • The Depressives: A gigantic subset of the journals out there chronicle the writers’ horrible, crushing, day-in and day-out depression. Everything is black and bleak and they’re usually taking a vast quantity of mood altering substances, like heroin. I’ve been criticized for criticizing them before, but please: get some help. Try to help yourself. Wallowing works for about three days before it’s time to move on to something new.
  • The High Schoolers and College Freshmen: Irrepressible kids who are experiencing a world of things for the very first time and they want you, the reader at home, to know what it’s like! The problem being, of course, the more mature reader (ahem: me) has been there, done that. This is not their fault. But the lack of perspective gets a little tiring for me.
  • The Perky Ones: A writer (usually female) who’s chipper about everything and everyone and usually dots her i’s with a heart and has pictures of unicorns on every page. Everything’s just keen and they want to cuddle with their dog Fluffy and write about how great everything is. Amazingly cloying.
  • The Nerds: Guys who can’t get laid and describe their days in the most boring way possible—you can hear the monotone.

  • The Annoying and Obscure: You can’t tell why this person is writing. More importantly, you can’t tell what this person is writing. The writer either chooses an academic, overly syllabic writing style that’s more suited to government work or a style that obscures who every character in the journal is and what those characters have done. Just say no.

(Let me reiterate: this is MY list. You may have a different list that includes the dreaded “Snarky, Sarcastic Journalers Who’ve Been Around Too Long,” and that’s fine, okay?)

Don’t be a stereotype. Be a whole person and get angry or get sad or be ecstatic or whatever—just don’t be that way every goddamn day. Let us see the whole you. If you’ve said something 3 days in a row, we get it already. Find something new.

Not only will your reader appreciate it, but so will you. No, honestly. Make yourself stretch beyond the tip of your nose.

Frequently Asked Questions

I get a lot of mail on this essay. Many people have asked the same questions, so I figured I would answer some of them here (so you don’t have to wait around for my answer, which may not be coming—I’m not as good with answering mail as I used to be).

Questions:

  1. I gotta a thing or two to say to you!
  2. Will you look at my journal and give me feedback on it?
  3. Why are you trying to discourage someone who might want to keep an online journal? Don’t you just want more readers for yourself?
  4. Why do I have to know why I’m doing this? Why can’t I just do it?
  5. How can you possibly say there are standards for journals?
  6. I don’t wanna do it your way! I have my own path!
  7. Why did you write this essay?

I gotta a thing or two to say to you!

I love getting feedback on this essay. Honestly, I do. So if you have plaudits, comments, or vitriol-filled counterattacks, that’s fine: Leave a comment here or on my blog. (I don’t always respond, but please don’t take that personally: I get a lot of mail.)

 

Will you look at my journal and give me feedback on it?

Lots of people read this essay and then write me asking to look at their journals and tell them what I think. I say the same thing every time.

No.

I’m not the Arbiter Of Good. I only know what I like.

So I say no.

Feel free to send me the URL for your journal—just don’t expect I’m going to give you any sort of critique on it.

 

Why are you trying to discourage someone who might want to keep an online journal? Don’t you just want more readers for yourself?

Well, I’m not trying to discourage anyone. If someone thinking about keeping an online journal gets discouraged by something I’ve written, it’s probably for the best. No, really. If this general essay not directed at anyone in particular can stop someone from writing a journal, imagine what criticism specifically directed at that person will do.

I don’t think it’s my job to do nothing but encourage people. Nothing’s going to stop you from doing what you want really want to do. I’m reminded of the old joke:

A young violinist goes to see Itzhak Perlman. He plays his violin for Perlman and asks if he has the talent to be a great violinist. Perlman tells him to give up the violin.

Years later, the young man, now an accountant, runs into Perlman again and asks, “How did you know I didn’t have the talent?”

Perlman says, “That’s what I tell everyone. If you’d truly wanted to play the violin, you wouldn’t have listened to me.”

There’s also the advice from Georges Simenon: “Everyone who does not need to be a writer, who thinks he can do something else, ought to do something else.”

In regards to my getting more hits because others aren’t starting journals…think about it. There aren’t a finite number of journals you’re allowed to read every day. It’s not like if you read mine you can’t read someone else’s.

 

Why do I have to know WHY I’m doing this? Why can’t I just do it?

You don’t have to know why. I simply recommend knowing why. (I recommend this for any endeavor.) You’re not just putting up any old writing—you’re putting up very personal information about yourself for anyone to read. Why are you doing that? Are you aware of the downsides?

 

How can you possibly say there should be standards for journals?

When someone reacts negatively to the idea of standards, I find myself asking why. I don’t think I’ve said anywhere what you must and must not do. I offer suggestions, that’s all.

This essay concerns what I find to be elements of journals that I’ve returned to time and again and elements of journals that I’ve looked at once and never felt the need to return to. If those are “standards,” so be it.

You can do anything you like.

 

I don’t wanna do it your way! I have my own path!

Hey, go for it. One of the beautiful things about the Web is that you can do exactly what you want. I can’t stop you. I’m not even trying to stop you.

One of the things I wanted to impart in this essay is what has worked for some of the more “successful” (read: widely read, widely admired, well-known) journals. And give you some idea of what doesn’t work.

Again, this advice concerns journals whose authors want their work to be read by more than a few of their friends. You may not care about anyone visiting your page twice, and that’s okay. You may have a new approach that fulfills all of your needs but others find less appealing.

 

Why did you write this essay?

Usually this question is followed by, “since you clearly hate them so much.”

I don’t hate online journals. Honestly. I love them. I have 10 journals I visit each and every day. I’m fascinated by the impulse so many of us have had to start and continue online journals.

I first started this essay in December 1996. This was during the first major flush of online journals. I wanted to analyze why I found some of them to be successful and others to be less so. I began with the essay “Why The Web Sucks” and focused simply on one somewhat tiny Web phenomenon.

Then the Napolitano essay burst on the scene. In case you haven’t heard of it, it’s an overwritten piece of academese that says that online journals are “women’s writing” and are badly-written, myopic, and kitschy. I thought the premises of the article were wrong and said so.

The anger Napolitano’s ill-chosen and multisyllabic words generated among my fellow journalers, however, gave me pause. Maybe I’d better not say anything — I’m going to engender resentment and calls of elitism. (If you’d like to read this essay, along with my commentary on it, it is available in its entirety in my reply.)

After I wrote the essay, I got lots of feedback on it, and it’s been listed lots of places as a must-read for anyone interested in online journals. Which I find flattering, honest. But I think this essay has some worthwhile points to make, so I’m happy I wrote it. And I plan on keeping it as current as I can.

Why Web Journals Suck continues because web journals continue. They’re proliferating like mushrooms after the rain, or perhaps bunnies after…bunnies. And I’ll be the one to keep saying that most of them suck and suck hard. Staying quiet and being nice doesn’t solve anything.

I care because I think the Web is the best venue for revealing the self ever devised. Everyone says they want to be a writer — well, here’s your chance! And few people seem to know what to do with this opportunity.

Copyright 1998 Diane Patterson

1 Alas, I have discovered that that essay is lost to history. Or somewhere in my files. If I find it, I’ll post it.
2 The Paperwork was my first online journal.
3 Link broken. Will try to fix at some point.