From Samuel Pepys to Joan Didion, many literary greats wrote for no one but themselves \u2013 then found posterity pawing through their secrets. Trust me: you don\u2019t want to know my innermost thoughts<\/p>\n
A few years ago, a friend asked me to be her \u201cliterary executor\u201d. We were both, I think, tickled by the grandiose sound of it, as if I would be playing off competing bids from the Bodleian and the New York Public Library for her juvenilia and early drafts (she is not actually primarily a writer). What she wants, though, is quite serious: I am to destroy her diaries when she dies.<\/p>\n
That is because they aren\u2019t meant for anyone\u2019s eyes but her own. Whatever is in there (I don\u2019t know, didn\u2019t ask), it was never meant for public consumption. Many diarists feel that way: Sheila Hancock wrote<\/a> about destroying decades\u2019 worth of hers: \u201cMaybe this vicious, verging-on-insane woman is the real me, but if it is I don\u2019t want my daughters to find out.\u201d<\/p>\n Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From Samuel Pepys to Joan Didion, many literary greats wrote for no one but themselves \u2013 then found posterity pawing through their secrets. Trust me: you don\u2019t want to know my innermost thoughts A few years ago, a friend asked me to be her \u201cliterary executor\u201d. We were both, I think, tickled by the grandiose … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39921\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}