“It’s incredibly useful both for us personally and on a historical level to keep a daily record of what goes on around us during difficult times,” said Ms. Franklin, author of “Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life,” which won the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award for biography. She’s also currently working on a biography of perhaps the most famous diarist of all: Anne Frank.

Ready to start your coronavirus diary? Here are some tips to get started:

Know Your Story Has Value

Herbert “Tico” Braun, professor of history at the University of Virginia, said that just starting can be a challenge, especially for those who aren’t writers. “We have to convince ourselves that we’re writing something that perhaps other people want or need to read,” he said.

But the main point of this exercise shouldn’t necessarily be about what other people will think about our thoughts right now. “That doesn’t matter because we’re writing for ourselves to find out how we feel about things,” he said. He doesn’t even like to call them diaries — he prefers the term “jottings” instead.

“When we write these words, they don’t have to be great. They don’t have to be perfect. We don’t even have to write a complete sentence at first,” he said.

Dawne E. Dewey, head of special collections and archives at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, said that when she talks to people in her community about donating their papers, she often has to convince them. (The Wright State University Libraries’ Special Collections and Archives have asked volunteers to document the pandemic for the library’s records.) They usually tell her that they’re just ordinary people. “Some of the best stories we get are from ordinary people who are experiencing something extraordinary,” she said.