Best Known to Herself

Best Known to Herself was begun in January 2003. Latest entries are to be found on the home page or in the archive.

I came across my first online journal in 2001 (I know, I know, I was well behind the times). After reading it faithfully for a while, I followed a link from it to another journal, which was a bit more in the main stream of things at the time and so had links to lots more.

I was delighted. I have a terribly nosey streak, and here were people prepared - nay, eager - to cater to it. Many of them did so crudely and ineptly, but a few - and this is the important point - did so extremely well. It was wonderful. I romped, I raved.

I decided I had to try it for myself.

Then of course it took me eighteen months to get around to starting BKTH, by which time I'd read enough to be ... well, wary of the pitfalls that attend the genre.

I don't pretend that I will avoid these pitfalls. I'm sure all the worrying and unpleasant things that happen to online journallers will happen to me (along with, I hope, some of the lovely things), and I'm not at all sure how I'll deal with them. But I truly want to find out.

Certain of my dear friends have spoken long and loud against the practice of keeping an online journal. Others are on my side of the fence. Both sides have good and cogent arguments in their favour, and both sets of people, in my opinion, base their arguments on their emotional reaction. I happen to like the idea of an online journal, and so I declare it a valid genre (with, obviously, good and bad examples). Others detest the idea, and so they declare it invalid.

As of the present writing, I don't intend to inform the latter group about BKTH. If they stumble across it, I hope they'll let me know - and I hope they keep reading!

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