Are these rules applicable to Livejournal?

Rules for Writing an Amusing Diary (or Livejournal)

, taken from The Guardian's Weekend Guide (by Andrew Mueller).


1. Be interested in things other than yourself
This is important. Bridget Jones (the book) was great comedy, but the impenetrable solipsism that made the fictional character funny would kill any real diary stone dead (try the random button on Livejournal for some ideas of how tiresome self-absorption can be.) Great diarists are great observers above all. (Ollie comment: Ok, time to confess it - don't you just skip over the whiny, self-indulgent posts? Aren't you, on the other hand, mesmerized and addicted to the journals that are descriptive about people and the world around them? I am.)

2. Live in interesting times
It was the travails forced upon them that made great diarists of Victor Klemperer and Salam Pax. Klemperer, a middle-aged Jewish languages professor who survived the second world war in Dresden, and Pax, a young Iraqi computer enthusiast, recorded incremental absurdities of a situation descending inexorably into madness - and took considerable personal risks to do so. Their diaries resonate because both insisted on living their lives despite the lunacy surrounding them - Klemperer attempting to keep up with his beloved movies, Pax fretting about whether the new Coldplay album would be any good (Ollie comment: it wasn't.) It would be harsh to suggest that any aspiring diarist should relocate to Mogadishu or Grozny before putting pen to paper, but if you're writing about your life in Milton Keynes, you'll have to be pretty special. (O.c.: Just because you live in Buttfuckville, it doesn't mean you have to surrender to your boring life - and deliver it to us on a tray. If nothing is going on in your life, tell us about your psycho neighbour.)

( Read more... )