Style
This design is simple: the template makes use of a delightful putty color and a simple photo in the top quadrant, which welcomes my eyes (unlike all sorts of other horrid colors and photos people choose for their diaries). The entry text block is wide, and the font is easy to read. In short, the design doesn't interfere with the writing. And that's what we're all aiming for, I hope. Navigation is clean, and I like the paucity of links and extra stuff you list at the bottom. Prudent, this design is prudent. Credit here goes to you for choosing it, and not fucking it up. And credit goes to evilgnome for designing it.
Substance
This writer knows herself well, and gives an honest go at getting a handle on her motivations, and the epistemological and emotional raisons d'etre for those motivations. I hope I have the Frenglish right there, because the author appears to have a french email address (leaving me wondering if she's in the USA--pronounced EW-ZA--or in la France). On most days, she writes several separate segments of information, entered throughout the day and organized in each entry by time. This gives the diary a chronological "running thought process" feel. And our dear writer writes a lot. Never mind that, though. Her entries are thoughtful, and very carefully executed. After reading for a bit, I feel full--like I've listened to a Sibelius symphony, rather than a skipping Screaching Weasles record. I do feel, on occasion, that the writer overwrites unimportant things. An example of this is the recent 14 July 2003 entry. Again, the entry is extremely well-written, but sometimes feels murky and heavy, even melodramatic, to this reader. Usually the very descriptive, precise sentences work well (like the first paragraph of the above entry; I love it). But the second paragraph gets a little heavy.
Suggestions
I want to know more about you. Maybe you don't want me to know much more, but I'd really appreciate some sort of "about me" page that gives, maybe, geographic information, such as what continent you are on. I will then try forgive you for your British spelling tendencies. Muhaha. Really, though: add some sort of biographical content, if you're up to it. Perhaps tone down your tone on some topics that aren't quite worthy of detailed description. Avoid being heavy-handed, so that your heavy-worthy topics ring more clearly. Examples of appreciated thick and descriptive writing include the the entry here.I like just the Anticlimax portion of this entry, for its blunt honesty and the way it takes the ordinary and successfully turns it into something interesting to me (the reader). Finally, I really liked this entry, about returning to the barn to ride horses.
Grade: A-
Thanks for the good read. As I said, some of your writing is murky to wade throught, but much of it is beautifully understated.
