This is not meant as a scientific poll by any means, but more of a curiosity:  do you keep a diary or journal that is just for you? In this era of social media, it seems sometimes that there is no privacy at all.  We post often and regularly to Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr (or whatever the latest one is – I can’t keep up!). Many of us post regularly to our blogs, sharing our works of art as well as our opinions and thoughts on the world.

But there are a lot of times when I have things that I need to say, but I need to say them to no one at all.  I used to keep a paper diary but that was hard to manage because A) my handwriting is atrocious, B) finding storage for all those notebooks in my tiny, little, crooked house is not easy and C) I would have to take the laptop off my lap in order to put a notebook there…and that’s just not likely to happen.

I used to use my diary as a place to “just write”. Some days it was my deepest, darkest secrets. Some days it was just me waxing poetic about the girl with the beautiful hair who wouldn’t give me the time of day. Some days it was me doodling with a new story idea that magically started to appear on the page as I was waxing poetic about that girl with the beautiful hair.  I used to be diligent about it – 30 minutes, every day, no matter what.  I’d go back days or weeks later and read what I wrote, often being able to pull a neat little short story out of the debris field of my written mind-dump.  While times and life have changed, I’d like to get back to that kind of structure where I write whatever thoughts come to mind without any particular goal or target…though I suspect most of my commentary will be about coffee these days.

Regardless of the potential topics, I’ve tried various online tools to keep my private thoughts and ideas safe and secure, but I’ve never really been happy with them.  Private blogs work okay but end up distracting me anyway as I fiddle with the look and feel (even though it’s just for my eyes only).  I find online notebooks like evernote to be clumsy and hard to use.  I’ve used Microsoft Word documents but they, too, come to a point where I get distracted by fonts and colors and formatting and tables of contents and… you get the picture.

The issue is clearly me more than it is the tools.  I have settled on a private blog for now but I’m curious what methods the Today’s Author community might be using for a modern, comfortable, easy-to-use-and-not-too-distracting journal or diary.  I’d love to hear your methods for letting the private thoughts out while still keeping them private.