The personal journal is a time-honored literary form. Surely we’re not all the diarists that Pepys was, and we’re not all situated in time and history and place the way Anne Franks was, yet keeping a diary or journal is profound for the ordinary as well as the extraordinary. Perhaps you think you’re just a nobody, but if you write about your life with insight and passion, your words have value. Maybe only you will read your words, or perhaps your writing will move others—perhaps you’ll even achieve fame for your journals—but if you don’t begin the process of writing, you’ll never know.
Bloggging has created an unprecedented interest in the subject of journals and memoirs. The huge proliferation of personal blogs, some subject-specific, some general day-to-day diaries, some deeply self-revealing, is surely a sign of the times. Perhaps it’s blogging that has made the memoir one of the most popular literary trends: As important as the novel was until recently.
“”Mommy blogging”" is a kind of personal journaling done by stay at home moms (SAHMs), chronicling their daily lives as moms, focusing on kids but often becoming much, much more.
Microblogging—aka Twitter—has supplanted many people’s desire to write “”old-fashioned”" (ha!) blogs, but long-form journaling still has a profound impact on the internet. The “”Shorties”" are the awards given to short-form bloggers. The “”Bloggies”" are given out to all kinds of blogs, including fashion, humor, political, and so forth, but there is definitely a category for personal blogs (journals). Of course, some journals end up falling into one of the other categories. Jenny Lawson, “”The Bloggess,”" started out as a Mommy blogger but she’s naturally so funny that she quickly landed in the humor category, and, just to come full circle, has written a (humorous) memoir.