TINA BROWN

FOUNDER AND CEO OF TINA BROWN LIVE MEDIA/WOMEN IN THE WORLD

As life moves faster, the impulse to make sense of it is even greater. There’s a need to get out of the online soundbite, tweet and post and really delve deep into yourself. People spend a lot of time pretending to be someone else. No one on Facebook has an unattractive child or a failed birthday party, it’s all, ‘We’re doing great!’ The more we turn ourselves into these ‘positive’ brands, the more important it is to uncover one’s secret life; one’s inner thoughts and feelings – I think there’s no better place to do that than in a diary.

I started writing one aged 11, when I went to boarding school – I was homesick and it became fulfilling. I found myself recording more dialogue, situations and drama. I used to think hungrily when I was out, as if my diary needed to be fed with interesting new stories. I didn’t think I would ever publish my diaries, but I did think I was hoarding material for something. When I started writing a memoir, I didn’t enjoy the process of making an artefact out of my whole life. I knew my diaries from working at

Vanity Fair [1983 to 1992] must be interesting – there was something about the warp speed and the inthe-now-ness of them. It felt more authentic and right for the time to publish those observations in the raw.

Two things stood out when reading them: my Englishness, and how social life was back then. People were giving black-tie dinner parties in their homes – you were out in long dresses every night. When editing my diaries, I asked myself three questions: does this move the story of my life along? Is this amusing? Does this give an interesting picture of the times? I started to censor and then I thought, ‘Fuck it – I want to talk about these things as they were.’ You’re either going to be honest, or you’re not. The strands about money got a lot of feedback – people liked reading about how I hadn’t felt well paid enough and how I summoned the courage to change that. It’s interesting that people would rather talk about sex than money. If you get five girlfriends together, not many will say what’s going on in their money life. I don’t regret it, though. I like to think I’m helping out the next lot.

One issue I did find sensitive was my son’s Asperger’s. He’s self-aware, so I talked about it with him, but sharing that story was important because it would be misleading to give the impression that my life was one big social whirl. Backstage, it was by no means glamorous. Even though I was lucky to have help, being a working mum is exhausting. I think my diary was how I kept my head together. It’s watering the oasis of your internal life and allowing your starved soul to have a say; it’s my soul in conversation with itself.

I switched from a paper diary to my laptop in 2OOO. Today, I write mainly first thing in the morning, when the world feels quiet. There’s still something wonderful about capturing the mood I’m in. You put your faith into things you think are going to happen, or discover something you think isn’t important,

is important. That’s the joy of it: the constant unravelling of life. It’s also a good steer for creating content. I was recently at something where someone was talking about the bombing of Syria, which might be interesting later. I don’t have time to necessarily write an article, but I want to make sure I record what I think. It’s more a desire to describe the world. I feel I’m living in strange, explosive and hard-to-understand times, and writing about it in my diary makes me feel calmer about that. Tina’s book, The Vanity Fair Diaries, is out now in paperback

“IT’S WATERING THE OASIS OF YOUR INNER LIFE

ALLOWING YOUR STARVED

SOUL TO HAVE a SAY”