The best advice I ever got about keeping a diary came from my mother when I was eight years old. I'd just received my first diary - a small hardcover notebook with unicorns on it -- and she said, 'You can write anything you want in here. You don't even need to worry about spelling. You're the only person who's meant to read this.' That advice is at the heart of what keeping a diary is all about. Unlike other types of writing, a diary is generally not meant to be ready by anyone else.

So, if nobody else is going to read it, why write it? There are many reasons people keep a diary. For some, it's a way to nurture their creativity. Writing in a diary can help spark new ideas or develop thoughts. For other people, keeping a diary is a way to stay emotionally healthy. Writing in a safe space can help you process past experiences. A diary is also a way of keeping a record of what happened and when. Others keep a diary of things that they're thankful for, as a way to be more in tune with the good things in their life. And some people keep a diary as a way to improve themselves or follow through on changes they're trying to make. You can keep a diary for any reason that interests you.

A diary can take many different forms. You can use a regular notebook. You can buy a specially designed diary, some of which even come with small padlocks on them. Or you can use your computer, choosing to save what you write on the hard drive or even the Internet.

But how do you keep a diary? If there are no rules, how do you know what to do? First off, there are no hard and fast rules to keeping a diary; there are conventions that many diary keepers follow. A convention is a way that something is usually done. Following conventions can make things easier, because you don't need to reinvent the wheel. Rather, you can benefit from the experiences of other people.