“Selby Yarrow’s Private Diary” can be found in The Snowman Three Doors Down. Poor Selby Yarrow starts a diary, but runs into difficulty with both his intentions and his materials. He also decides to keep it in code, only to realize that anyone can crack it, since he described it before using it. Here’s how it begins:

SELBY YARROW’S PRIVATE DIARY

January 3: I bought a diary today, and I plan to use it to record my thoughts, observations, and emotions, as well as the ongoing history of my daily life. I meant to start on January 1, two days ago, but I didn’t get around to it until today, January 3. It’s a nice looking diary, with a plain green cover. Some of the diaries that I looked at had various pictures on the cover, but I decided against them, because the picture might not suit my mood or thoughts on a given day. There was one with a rainbow on the cover, for example. But what if it was raining or snowing, and I wanted to write about how I felt in the foul weather. A plain green cover, like this one, is more likely to suit my mood on a given day. Not much happened today, but tomorrow I’ll take a walk, and I’ll probably have a lot to write about. Goodbye for now.

January 4: I took a walk today, and a car almost ran me over. What an asshole! And I had the light, too. I’m lucky I wasn’t killed. This brush with mortality put me in a bad mood, and I felt angry and tense all day. My stomach hurt, and I walked around talking to myself, imagining that I was yelling at him for his dangerous driving. But then I realized that I probably looked like I was crazy, so I stopped. I had every reason to be angry, and talking to myself in that way was perfectly justified under the circumstances, but someone who was passing by might not know that. So I decided to remain silent, although my thoughts were still racing in indignation. I decided to write this diary in pencil, even though it’s less permanent than ink, because if I make a mistake, it’s easier to correct than it would be if I were writing it in pen, which is harder to erase. With a pencil, you can simply erase your error, and then substitute the correction in its place. This diary would look better if I’d started with pencil yesterday, but you can’t have everything.

…