The Writer's Journal

Playwright, essayist and poet Bender (Writing the Personal Essay) has done working writers a tremendous favor in compiling this collection of journal snippets and meditations on journal-keeping from a number of contemporary writers. Among the best meditations are those that illustrate how the quoted entries find their way into a contributor's work of poetry or prose, as in the case of Linda Bierds's poem ""White Bears: Tolstoy at Astapovo."" Also fascinating is the variety of ways in which writers define their journals as journals. Omar S. Castaneda, for example, does ""not keep a writer's journal"" but uses ""scraps of napkins, clippings, full-page notes, unordered quotes, character sketches, interesting lines, paper-clipped photographs, ripped-out-of-magazine things."" Some turn to letters, while others keep only travel journals. Yet no matter what the form, or what they call it (""project notebook,"" ""scrapbook"", etc.), all recognize as a ""writer's journal"" that well from which they draw ideas, phrases, thoughts and insights for their finished work. The gravest weakness of the volume is that, despite the oft-emphasized cultural diversity of the contributors, there is a telling sameness to their essays on journal-keeping (and sometimes even their entries). This derives in large part from the artistic and occupational uniformity of the selected authors. There are no writers of popular or genre fiction, for example, and at least three-quarters of those included appear to make their livelihoods as college teachers or professors. As is, the volume is too long and might have made do with only half the number of contributors. (Jan.)