SHOCK REVELATION: I Am Not Mrs Dale - Lucy Coats

Like John Dougherty yesterday, I was going to write about something different.  Not a Kindle (I don't have one...yet), but the furore around Bookstart.  However, John has done such an excellent job of it that he's left me with nothing to say--except that I agree with him about many things, not least of which is that 2011 is going to be a year of standing up (or sitting in) and shouting. 

So.  What to write about at the beginning of this new year? I think a confession is probably in order.  You lot always seem to like my confessions, and indeed I have a multitude of sins to confess. Here goes....

I am a failure.  I've been a failure for nearly half a century, or at least ever since I was old enough to write a comprehensible sentence.  And before you start in with the soothing rebuttals of this rather startling statement, I don't actually mean as a writer. I think I'm reasonably good at that.  What I mean is that I am a failure as a diarist.  In other words, Mrs Dale I am not.

I've tried more times than I can count to keep one. When I was a child, without fail some aunt or godparent would give me a diary for Christmas--once even a magnificent red leather-bound 5-year one.  I started off every time on 1st January with hope that this time, this time I would do it.  I would write something about my life every single day of the year till I reached the milestone of 31st December.  I failed every time.  In fact, the longest I ever lasted was till March 15th, a measly two-and-a-half months.

In later life--after I became a full-time writer--I tried in other ways.  I tried to write a journal.  I tried to write a dream book.  I even tried to write a poem diary.  The poems were quite good, but there are only ten of them.  There just seems to be a little part of my brain which is a rebel, which says: "this is really boring.  Your mundane daily life is boring. Who's going to want to read about all that stuff like how the maths teacher shouted at you again for being stupid over trigonometry (a frequent childhood event), or how your university tutor made you smoke pot as part of your 'education', or what it was like for a young editor in 80's New York, or how it felt to fly out of Ladakh eight days before they closed the borders to the West, or...or...."  Yes. I know.  Those things might all be of interest to future generations of my family or the wider world.  But it's the bits in between I have trouble with. The days when nothing happens except a trip to the supermarket or doing the housework or the school run.  That's when I lose the will to write a diary.

However this year, 2011, is the year of my half century.  Surely 50 years on the planet deserves recording in some way.  So I'm going to try again.  I have it all planned out.  I shall have a 'secret diary blog' which I shall write once a week, recording the events and thoughts of the last seven days.  Actually, I've already started it.  Will I succeed?  Yes.  I bloody well will. And you can quote me on that come December 31st.  If you remember.