I used to journal from the time I was in my early teens until I was about twenty-nine, but then I stopped. Why? Because I started publishing. … I think that my journal was a casualty of the “Published Author” mentality that every word I put down must be for public consumption. Who had time to scribble privately in a spiral notebook when there were novel to work on, essays to outline, blog entries to compose, etc.? I had forgotten the free-writing pleasure of working my random thoughts out of the page. Journaling, for me, went out the window along with pointless travel and reading just for the hell of it.

—Tayari Jones