SHOW ME YOUR DIARY
featuring writer and nature journaler Ann Guy
Hello there! Welcome to The Magpie, a newsletter that serves as a collection of shiny objects about writing, creativity, hopes, and obsessions. My current obsession is diaries and the people who write them. Since I started keeping one at age eight, my diary has been a place of exploration and intensity, of lists and favorite quotes, of ticket stubs and wildflowers. It is a place to remember and a place to dream.
My most recent book, The Leaving Season: A Memoir in Essays, is out now! I relied on decades of my own diaries to help me write this book. My next book focuses on historical diaries of women, famous and not, and why we continue to write—and read!—these archives.
This is a Show Me Your Diary interview, a series that explores diaries and the creatives who keep them. Every week, I ask a new person to give us a peek inside their diary process, complete with photos. Yes, we are very nosy!
Want to show me your diary, or know somebody who does? Send me an email—you can just reply to this newsletter. Let’s get started…
Today’s interview is with Ann Guy, whose journal practice is one I am deeply envious of and whose “pencil miles” I covet. Ann interviewed me for MUTHA Magazine when my memoir, The Leaving Season, first came out and her questions built one of the most cerebral conversations I’ve ever had about the intersection of motherhood and creativity. Afterwards, I read everything she’d written and became a superfan of her brain. I didn’t know anything about her nature journaling, however, until I saw a post of hers on Instagram about attending an event with journal master John Muir Laws and the amazing Amy Tan to celebrate Tan’s The Backyard Bird Chronicles, one of my favorite books of last year.
Ann shared that she was nature journaling with a birding group, which was very different than journaling together with other writers. “It’s even more studious than writing with people, bc I find that writers are often looking for reasons NOT to write when they’re together, whereas nature journalers are completely absorbed in their watercolors and sketches.” Ha! We also talked about the novelty of learning something new as an adult and the willingness it requires to be terrible at something (or, at least, feel like we are terrible at something) and persevere.
The way Ann discusses how her writing and drawing journals play together again made me think again of Tan, who wrote, “When I go back and read my journals or fiction, I am always surprised. I may not remember having those thoughts, but they still exist and I know they are mine, and it's all part of making sense of who I am.” I see this constant stretching toward knowledge in Ann’s nature journals, especially in the way she is using the landscape to make sense of her life. The questions that inhabit her mind as she is looking at the world, the questions that appear as she is looking—really looking, since a different kind of seeing is required for rendering a scene via image than words—build a beautiful holistic picture of her mind in that moment.
For this interview, we talked about the importance of approaching life as a novice, the difference between a written journal and a drawing journal, and why Ann hopes someday her two children read her journals.
And, of course, she lets us peek inside some of her actual diaries…
THE MAGPIE: Team Diary vs Team Journal? What do you like to call it?
ANN GUY: Journal. To me, a diary records one’s daily path through the days, whereas a journal is meant to be sporadic. I make an entry in my journal only when something begs to be remembered.
I hope someday my two kids read them. I think they will get to know parts of me that are mostly invisible to them, as well as parts of me that existed before they were born.
How long have you kept a journal?
I’ve kept a written journal since I was about thirteen years old. So…about forty years. Very recently I’ve begun keeping a nature journal, which consists of drawings, watercolors, and words (descriptions, stories, and questions).
What do you hope will happen to your journals once you are gone?
They are mostly a gift of presence and thought to myself. But I hope someday my two kids read them. I think they will get to know parts of me that are mostly invisible to them, as well as parts of me that existed before they were born. The other alternative is that they get burned! One or the other.
What is your favorite kind of journal?
For written journals, I like lined journals on paper that is smooth and doesn’t resist writing. Moleskine or Leuchttrum 5.5” x 8.5” are nice – small enough to fit easily into a small shoulder bag. My favorite pens are Pilot Precise V5 RT, extra fine tip.
For my nature journal, I use a Stillman & Birn Alpha Series blank book, 5.5” x 8.5”. The pages are thick enough for multi-media use – pencil, colored pencil, and water color. It dries without wrinkling. The texture is good for sketching, but still smooth enough to write on with a fine-tip pen. If I want to make a big picture, I can take up two pages because the pages are stitched in a way that they can lie flat.
In reality, I am a novice in the world regardless of form, but it’s nice to give myself permission to be one.
Every entry in my nature journal includes a question. For someone like me who is sometimes overly analytical and answer-driven, asking a question forces me to open a window, to push the boundaries of what I see and what I think I know. This feels important not only for thinking creatively, but for living with more of an attitude of curiosity. No one likes a know-it-all.
What has journal-keeping given you or taken away from you?
Sometimes, written journal entries come with added internal pressure to describe something precisely. To find the exact words for a feeling or shape or experience. This can sometimes feel like work that borders on the obsessive (not quite at the level of Sarah Manguso in Ongoingness: The End of a Diary, but not entirely different either), which can sometimes remove me from the moment and from other people, and put me deep into my own head. But what it gives back to me is awareness. It feels good to pay attention to my experience.
My nature journal gives me the opposite – no pressure, because I’ve never pretended to be a good visual artist. I feel more freedom to represent the world in a flawed way, as a novice, as someone who is still learning to look. I can be messy. In reality, I am a novice in the world regardless of form, but it’s nice to give myself permission to be one.
More About Ann Guy:
Ann Guy is a writer and recovering engineer who was born in the Philippines, grew up among the cornfields and cow patties of Western Michigan, and now lives in Oakland, CA. Her writing and interviews have appeared in Craft Literary, River Teeth (Beautiful Things), Sweet Lit, Entropy, MUTHA, Ekphrastic Review, Literary Mama, Motherwell, Terrain.org, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a historical and speculative fiction novel about migration, loss, and kinship.
Find Ann online at www.ann-guy.com, and here are some of her upcoming classes:
Write Now!
A 90-minute generative writing session on Saturday, August 2 in person (Berkeley). Register at https://www.writingsalons.com/event/write-now-summer-2025-berkeley/.
Creative Nonfiction 101: Shape Stories from Your Own Life
An introductory CNF class including readings, discussions, craft lessons, writing, and light workshopping. Five Wednesdays from August 13 - September 10 in person (Berkeley). Register at https://www.writingsalons.com/event/creative-nonfiction-101-summer-2025/
Introduction to Fiction
Fall 2025: Schedule and registration available soon at https://www.writingsalons.com/all-classes/
Creative Nonfiction Workshop
Fall 2025: Schedule and registration available soon at The Writing Salon.
Ann is on twitter at @annsy0, instagram at @anncguy, and Facebook at @anncguy.
Thanks for reading The Magpie by Kelly McMasters! As always, more of what I’m up to can be found on my website, and you can follow me on Instagram for day-to-day updates.
Buy The Leaving Season here, Welcome to Shirley here, Wanting: Women Writing About Desire here, and This is the Place: Women Writing About Home here.
Hi, Kelly. I love Ann's journals especially the drawings. I also really enjoyed your interview of Courtney Maum and her diaries. I'd love to share my notebooks if your interested. Stanley https://www.stanleypatrickstocker.com/about
Everything Ann touches gets smarter and more beautiful. I’m so inspired by these nature journals and I adore this whole series—all the different amazing ways to track life in journals and/or diaries!