Artyness columnist Barbara's new project just has an audience of one

I stare down at the blank pages.

Then I shut the book again and peruse the cover for the umpteenth time. It’s a simple, dark green ring-bound affair, not ostentatious at all. A smiling typewriter cartoon declares: 2023. 1 book. 12 chapters. 365 pages. Make it awesome!

I cringe a little at the last word. When a friend offered me ‘a notebook’ she had ordered by mistake, I didn’t hesitate. I am a writer – I have approximately 72 notebooks on the go at any given time. Yes, I’ll take another. No problem, just give it here.

Only when I took a closer look at home did I notice the cover, and the unlined pages. Oh my goodness! I had gratefully accepted a notebook. A notebook comes with no strings attached, but this – this was a DIARY. A diary with sky-high expectations – not only am I to fill the 12 chapters and 365 pages, but with some sort of obligation to make it all awesome too! I buried it under a pile of paperwork and got cooking for Christmas.

However, as the days around New Year trickle into one another, I couldn’t resist pulling it out again. After all, some of my favourite books are written in diary format. It’s an easily digestible form, bitesize and unthreatening.

The most recent diary I read was Madly Deeply – The Diaries Of Alan Rickman, the late actor best known for his role as Severus Snape. I was struck by how personal it was, how ramshackle, random and human. There was much I didn’t understand at first – it was as if he was writing it for an audience of one: himself. He didn’t seem to feel a need to explain, just to record whatever was most important to him on that particular day. I had expected behind-the-scenes insights into the filming of the Harry Potter movies, for instance – instead Rickman name-dropped friends he met for dinners, his journeys, delays, his artistic frustrations and triumphs. It wasn’t what I had expected, but if felt utterly authentic and therefore compelling. It was a record, not a story. Not I Capture The Castle or The Diary Of Adrian Mole. There was no character arc. But there were drawings and doodles aplenty, a man constantly on the move who clearly delighted in blank pages for company. A man who valued a record of people, places, events, and yes, occasionally feelings. Maybe he was a bit scatty like me, and needed reminding whom he saw where and when.

As I ponder this, I feel at liberty to take up the challenge for 2023. Fine! I shall attempt to fill some of these 365 pages. But I only agree to this with a couple of caveats: I choose to write it for an audience of one, and reserve the right to make it cryptic, selective, boring and ramshackle. It will be a record, and categorically not awesome.

If you’re looking for stories, may I direct you to the 72 notebooks on the desk.

Happy New Year!

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