# A journal that returns, in five decisions *A reusable format. Take it, fill it, use it again — for a series you intend to come back to after years, not for the writing you do this week.* --- ## What this is for This is the only format here that is not about a document. It is about a **schedule and an index**, and the writing is what happens when the two meet. The shape is simple to state and unusual to hold. You fix a small list of words. You write one short piece under each. Then you put it down, and years later — not months — you take the same list and write under the same words again. You do not revise the first set. You do not reconcile the two. You do not explain what changed. The two sets sit next to each other under the same heading and the difference between them is the work. **The return is the format.** A single pass is just a themed collection; anybody can make one in a week. What almost nobody does is come back to a fixed index after long enough to have become a different writer, and write again without softening what the earlier version said. The interval has to be long enough that the earlier entry is slightly embarrassing. That is the correct feeling and it is the reason the interval is measured in years. The index is what makes the return possible. Without a fixed list you would return to the theme and write about whatever had moved recently, which is the ordinary thing and produces nothing. *Where this comes from: **Missed opportunities**, a journal of mine at the Museum of Vestigial Desire, which has returned to the same index in 2013, 2015 and 2023 — [museumofvestigialdesire.net/functions/journal/missed-opportunities](https://museumofvestigialdesire.net/functions/journal/missed-opportunities).* --- ## The format ``` THE INDEX the fixed words, each one a single noun THE FRAME the one sentence that says what is being written under each word, and does not change between passes THE INTERVAL how long before returning, in years, decided in advance ON RETURNING what you may and may not do to earlier passes, which is always: nothing NOT THIS what would make it a series of updates instead ``` An index above, a refusal below, and three decisions between. ### What each decision is asking **THE INDEX.** The fixed words. Single nouns, six to a dozen, chosen so they are broad enough to still mean something to you in ten years and narrow enough that you cannot write about anything at all under them. *Doubt*, *friendship*, *institutions*, *technique*. **Choose them once and never edit the list**: adding a word later is the thing that will destroy the format, because a word added on the second pass has no first pass to sit beside and quietly turns the whole thing into a current project. **THE FRAME.** The one sentence saying what is written under each word. It is the same sentence on every pass and it is the only continuity between them. *The opportunities this word describes that were missed, by other people, and how they came to be missed.* Whatever the frame is, it must be answerable in a way that does not depend on when you are answering. **THE INTERVAL.** How long before returning, decided in advance and in years. Two is the shortest that does anything; eight is not too long. Deciding it in advance matters more than the number does, because a return you schedule when you happen to feel like returning is not a return, it is the next thing you were going to write anyway. **ON RETURNING.** What you may do to earlier passes. The answer is nothing. No revision, no footnote, no bracketed note saying you see it differently now. **The earlier version is the evidence and editing it destroys the only thing this format produces.** Write that down explicitly, because the urge to soften an old entry arrives at exactly the moment you are best placed to act on it. **NOT THIS.** What would make it a series of updates. Usually: the interval shrinks, or the index grows, or a new pass starts referring to the old one. Any of the three and you have a blog with an unusual table of contents. --- ## A worked one ``` THE INDEX doubt · family · friendship · music · art · children Six. Fixed on the first pass. THE FRAME What was available under this word and not taken, and what made it un-takeable at the time. THE INTERVAL Every four years. Decided before the first pass, so the second was not a response to how the first landed. ON RETURNING Nothing. Earlier passes are not edited, annotated, introduced, or apologised for. They carry their date and that is all the context they get. NOT THIS A word gets added because something happened. The new word has one entry, the others have three, and the whole index now reads as a record of this year. ``` Note that the interval was fixed before the first pass. That is the detail that is easy to skip and hard to recover: an interval chosen afterwards is chosen in the light of how the first pass went, and it will be short. --- ## How to use it 1. **Fix the index and the frame in one sitting, and write nothing under them that day.** Both decisions get worse when made beside a draft you are pleased with. 2. **Decide the interval before the first pass, and write the year down.** Not *in a few years* — the year. 3. **Write the first pass quickly.** It is not meant to be your best work under those words; it is meant to be what you thought then, at the length you had then. Polishing it makes the second pass harder to write honestly. 4. **When the return comes, reread the earlier pass once and then leave it alone.** Rereading is necessary and rereading twice is where the editing starts. 5. **Publish them side by side, under the same word, with dates and nothing else.** No introduction reconciling them. The reader can see the gap. --- ## Three ways it goes wrong **The index grows.** Something significant happens and it has no word, so a word is added. It is the single most reasonable-seeming move available and it converts the whole structure into a current record, because from then on the list describes the present rather than the interval. **The old pass gets a note.** One bracketed line — *written before X, obviously* — and the earlier version stops being evidence and becomes a draft the later self has approved. There is no small version of this edit. **The interval collapses.** Four years becomes two becomes annual, because returning is satisfying and the satisfaction is available sooner. At annual it is a column. Nothing is wrong with a column; it is simply not this, and the change happens without anybody deciding it. --- *Prayas Abhinav. Licensed [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) — copy it, change it, build on it, including commercially. Say where it came from, and if you changed it.*