The most interesting painting in the world is called Victory Boogie Woogie. Piet Mondriaan (1872-1944) The painter was still working on it three days before he died. Being unfinished it remains forever in progress and shows the painter's heart and soul. The painter disappeared into the painting and in the process becomes immortal.
But it is at the beginning where the diary is at a distinct disadvantage, unless upon emergence from the womb one was to immediately start writing. Maybe the birth cry is not a means of clearing the airways of amniotic fluid but a call for pencil and paper, or an eleven inch Macbook air with eight gigabytes of RAM and a European keyboard.
A famous writer Arnon Grunberg (1971-) read your book and liked it. He gave it a big write up in a national newspaper, but privately advised you to cut into your own flesh more. "Well," you said, "Although suffering is valuable, I think self-inflicted suffering is overrated. But I could show my wounds. I I have plenty of them and some of them still fester. Perhaps a writer's duty is to show their festering wounds?"
Is that what it means to be a writer? Is that what a writer should do? Does a writer have a duty? A calling?
My second favourite dead Dutch writer Gerard Kornelis van het Reve (1923–2006) announced in the 1960s he would write a book that would make all other books unnecessary, except the Bible and the telephone book. Ah sweet irony. Who can think of a more unnecessary book than the telephone book in 2023? There would be plenty of people alive now who wouldn't even know what a telephone book is, indeed the idea of a book with the names of all the people that lived in a town or city with their addresses and their telephone numbers would be hilarious to them.