S1E2: DiArama

05/14/23 • 41 min

In this second episode of Bad Diaries Podcast, we take another dive into the Bad Diaries universe.
We ask each other, Were you always a writer? We talk about our own history and practice of keeping diaries, personal journals and writing notebooks, and how that’s changed over time. Tracy curses her long-ago diary-reading boyfriend, and we ponder value, worth and hierarchies of writing.
Tracy reads diary entries made on an overseas work trip (seaweed conference in Thessaloniki? Yes, please!), when she was scheduled to fly from Vancouver to Auckland on 11 September 2001.
Jenny reads from DiArama – her 1980s diaries that she blogged, pseudonymously, in the 2010s – from April 1983, featuring bands, beer, boys, bad TV, and re-reading Blyton.
We talk about the postures we assume, and the voices and ideas we try out, in our diaries.
Then we talk about My Mum’s Bad Diaries, the podcast in which Jenny reads her own diaries to her 20-something daughter. Season 1 – in 27 episodes, covering 1980 to 1981 – was released in 2022, and Season 2 – starting in 1982 – is out weekly in 2023.

Find full show notes for this episode on the Bad Diaries Salon website baddiariessalon.com, or get in touch via Instagram or Facebook – we're @baddiariessalon everywhere.
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Bad Diaries Podcast is recorded and produced in Naarm Melbourne, Australia, on the lands of the Kulin Nation; and in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, on the iwi lands of Taranaki Whānui, and Ngāti Toa Rangatira. We pay our respects to Mana Whenua, and to Elders past, present and emerging, of these lands.

Previous Episode

S1E1: People dig it

In this first episode of Bad Diaries Podcast, we talk about Bad Diaries Salon, the live literary series that we co-produce and co-curate – from the concept’s beginnings in 2017, when Jenny first put a call out on Twitter, to running 20 salons, with more than 70 readers, between 2017 and 2022.
We talk about what makes the Bad Diaries Salon engine (juggernaut!) run so smoothly, recite the Bad Diaries Salon rules, and talk about the gold at the heart of salons: “people dig the concept, they get it straight away, and they love it”; “it works, it just works, it’s the little concept that could – it can fill a big space; it can also get little and quiet and beautiful”.
We introduce Bad Diaries Podcast, our hopes and plans for the podcast. The salons exist in the room in the moment, a contract between readers and audience, that you have to be there to experience. With the podcast, we want to create something to return to. We’ll talk all things diaries – our own, other people's, published and unpublished – and feature guest interviews with writers who've read at live salons, and with people publishing diaries, designing them, and using them in fiction, film and other media.

Next Episode

S1E3: Other people’s diaries

In this third episode of Bad Diaries Podcast, we talk about the origin of BAD in Bad Diaries, and how, in our diaries, we can allow the badness – and the goodness – of our unedited lives to show. Jen coins the term ba-goodness, and we commit to making bad good (and making good bad).
We bring other people’s diaries to this episode of the podcast, raiding our bookshelves for a random selection of Not At All Bad But Really Very Good Diaries to discuss. Some are diaries that we love and have re-read a bazillion times. Others we’ve only dipped into, or haven’t quite got round to reading (no shame!), despite best intentions.
There’s some very heavy fan-grrrling on Helen Garner, and lots of love for Sylvia Plath, Katherine Mansfield and Derek Jarman (and Tracy’s decades-long obsession with his cottage and garden). Sarah Laing, in The Covid-19 Diaries, reminds us of The Bubble, but we can’t remember whether or not (or why) The Pillow Book was sexy. Different note-making and page-marking styles are revealed (Jen’s a corner-folder, top and bottom; Tracy’s appalled), we ponder crossings-out and missing facts in our diaries, and we talk about gaps and guilty pleasures (again, no shame) on our bookshelves.
As we often do, we talk about this (writing) life. We get into professional competition (and jealousy), writing relationships (spouses and parents and sibs, oh my), and the importance of sisters (and how sisters freak Tracy out).