Keeping a journal is a bit odd sometimes. I’ve been keeping a sporadic journal of my thoughts and perspectives for just over twenty years now, which sounds a lot, but in some years I might only make half a dozen entries while in others I might make an entry every couple of weeks.

When I began with the journalising I was very certain of one thing – that the entries were purely for me, they weren’t something I’d ever allow anyone else to read and they certainly weren’t something that I’d ever consider publishing, and for my personal journal my thoughts on this are still unchanged.

What then is the point of keeping a journal? Well from the start I wrote the entries not only for myself, I wrote the entries almost like letters to myself . . . but not myself as a single person at some fixed point in time, rather I thought of myself as a crowd of increasingly shadowy and faint figures, those just a few weeks or months in my future were obviously the most opaque and solid looking, while those as distant as I am now in writing this post in 2016 I could barely imagine at all, so far removed from me they were in time.

What’s more, I made a specific point of not reading my own journal, once the page turned it was as good as sealed at least for a short while. To begin with I didn’t see the point, these entries were so fresh in my memory, a little later I began to be curious about what exactly I’d written, but it still felt too soon, and so a short while turned into four or five years, and six or seven, and then when I did finally allow myself to return to my own past, I limited my reading to small measures like a fine whisky or cognac, something best savoured.

Even to this day I still only allow myself these same small measures of my past, especially the earlier vintages that I can enjoy only once in a rare while for fear that the flavour and colour will fade should I become over familiar with it.

The odd thing though, after struggling to imagine the person I would be looking forward, is that now when I look back I find I struggle equally to remember the person I actually was. The events of my past still exist of course in broad brush strokes within my living memory, but my thoughts and perceptions, my feelings and inclinations from those times now seem to belong to another person entirely, a person I not only don’t always recognise, but also a person with whom I don’t often agree or even sympathise.

To put things another way, I found my sporadic journalising to be a very rewarding and worthwhile activity, so much that when I finally decided to get serious about writing a novel in 2006 I started a second journal to keep a closer and more detailed record of this particular aspect of my life. Imaginatively I call it my ‘writing journal’ and in it I have kept a record of the journey I took in first writing my novel, the twists and turns, the problems and victories, the joy and the despair. Not just the writing mind, no this journal covered the entire experience the writing, editing, the sending of query letters around to agents and finally with the advent of ebooks, my decision to self publish and all the additional bits and pieces which that invovles..

In many ways though this second journal was a bit different to my personal journal, For a start, I wasn’t quite so sure I’d never share it with others, even though, as is inevitable with these things it  overlaps with my personal journal at times considerably.

But the other big difference is that my writing journal, while still written to my future selves, is more like a discourse with writers more knowledgeable than myself, a place to bounce ideas around, for the searching of souls, for the grasping at straws and eventually for the working out of problems.

[amazon-element asin=”B019G0STI4″ fields=”lg-image,large-image-link”] I finally published my first novel just a few months ago in December 2015, and with that act my second journal seemed to come to an end, completed, finished, no more entries required. Which is probably as it should be, but I still miss it. The vintage entries in my writing journal have obviously come to maturity, and have on occasion been enjoyed by me, again in small and cherished measures, but I liked the more focused writing of my Writing Journal, and that I still missed.

All was however not lost. A few months before pressing the disappointingly small and ordinary looking ‘Publish’ button for my first novel, I found myself once more peering through the mists of time into the future and making a new determination. This time I decided I would not and could not simply stop writing once my first novel was published, I wanted to keep on writing and publishing, and what’s more I wanted to try and do it more seriously now I’d worked out the majority of the kinks in the process, so I set myself a new goal. I wouldn’t just write another novel, within the next year I would apply myself and try to get another four books written and published.

Yes, it’s a ridiculously ambitious goal. It took me three years to write my first novel, and another six years to see it finally in print and selling, so to go from that to writing and publishing four books in a year . . . perhaps unrealistic would be the better word.

And yet, here I sit. It took just over one hundred days to write my second novel (the first book in a new series), the first instalment of which is currently with friends to read and review prior to being published later on this month or early next.

Not only that but I’ve now made a strong start on novel number three (the sequel to my first book).

But here’s the rub. I’m at about as early a stage as its possible for me to be in what I amusingly like to call my writing career, but even now it’s not what I thought it would be. I’m simultaneously writing several hundred words a day, each and every day. I’m editing the second and third installations of my second novel, I’m refining the commissioned artwork with the artist for my second book, I’m talking to my beta readers and reviewers, updating my blog and adding to my website, I’m also figuring out how and when I should start marketing my books, and of course coming up with ideas and drafting plot outlines for the next book, (and others that will come after), the fourth one in total and the third that I’ll be attempting later on this year.

At times it feels like chaos, especially when i’m hoping between several different tasks that all need to be finished. But its strangely enjoyable, though definitely not how I imagined it would be, all those years ago in 2006 when I made my first commitment to myself to write and finish my first novel.

Finally, there is of course journal number three. With my writing journal now done, it wouldn’t be right to attempt write four more stories without having that more seasoned crowd of more experienced authors to bounce ideas off whenever I get stuck. But this too will be different. Firstly because I’ve decided it’s not going to be private, I’m going to allow anyone who’s interested to read it, and secondly because I’m going to keep it in the format of this blog.

Will I allow myself the luxury of going back and reading my earlier journal entries, yes of course . . . but probably not for a few years. . .