To make the statement "I am simply writing" is a bold presumption.
When writing, the author becomes an active participant (again), especially when tackling autobiographical content.
At this point, to speak of personal or journal writing would be a misleading oversimplification.
Initially, there is no such thing as pure personal writing - writing for one's self. Always there is an implied second-person reader, even in the person of the writer himself.
When including himself in his writing, the author is actually casting himself as a character in his own written life. By a phenomenon of juxtaposition, the author-character becomes a separate entity subjected to the scrutiny of the author-reader.
The author becomes his own creation. But this creation is not an end by itself; it is a process involving great responsibility: responsibility towards oneself as a character and as a reader.
Living up to this responsibility demands a great measure of analysis, breaking down the personal experience into an objective system of reasoning to make sense of that experience to do justice to the author-character and make that understandable for the author-reader.
This breaking-down is taxing on the author as he tries to rationalize his "irrational" emotions, engaging in his own therapy that grows more demanding the more personal or emotionally-grounded an experience is.
Following this "personal writing", a reverse process of putting the pieces back together is necessary to rebuild the big picture - the sum of its parts. That reconstruction is more arduous that the preceding breaking-down because of the need for the author to dissociate himself from his self.
When writing, the author becomes an active participant (again), especially when tackling autobiographical content.
At this point, to speak of personal or journal writing would be a misleading oversimplification.
Initially, there is no such thing as pure personal writing - writing for one's self. Always there is an implied second-person reader, even in the person of the writer himself.
When including himself in his writing, the author is actually casting himself as a character in his own written life. By a phenomenon of juxtaposition, the author-character becomes a separate entity subjected to the scrutiny of the author-reader.
The author becomes his own creation. But this creation is not an end by itself; it is a process involving great responsibility: responsibility towards oneself as a character and as a reader.
Living up to this responsibility demands a great measure of analysis, breaking down the personal experience into an objective system of reasoning to make sense of that experience to do justice to the author-character and make that understandable for the author-reader.
This breaking-down is taxing on the author as he tries to rationalize his "irrational" emotions, engaging in his own therapy that grows more demanding the more personal or emotionally-grounded an experience is.
Following this "personal writing", a reverse process of putting the pieces back together is necessary to rebuild the big picture - the sum of its parts. That reconstruction is more arduous that the preceding breaking-down because of the need for the author to dissociate himself from his self.
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