John Cheever was not just a prolific writer of short stories. From about the late thirties Cheever kept a journal, as his biographer, Blake Bailey, explains:
'At such times his main companion was his journal, where he stored the sights and sounds and smells which might prove useful as story fodder, as well as the private sorrows which he was all but incapable of sharing with the world, at least in raw form. ...the journal was primarily conceived as an exercise in professionalism; no longer a gadabout youth living off the charity of Yaddo, he couldn't afford to let saleable impressions go to waste. As Susan Cheever explained, 'He never said to himself, 'This is good material.' He didn't think that way. What you see in his journals is what he had to do instead, which is to write down everything that happened and see what rang and what didn't ring.'
What do we make of this description of a good idea, or potential story 'kernel', as something that 'rings'? How do you recognise the 'ring' in your own ideas? And what of writing down everything in a journal, in the level of detail that Cheever was in the habit of doing? Is this something that you do, or think could be useful? Or, does the idea of documenting your every waking hour on earth ring nothing but the tedium alarm for you?
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