Top Reasons You Should Add Journaling to Your Writing Day
Top Reasons You Should Add Journaling to Your Writing Day
There are benefits professional and personal
The Story Writer’s Path
There are benefits professional and personal
Sometimes I’m embarrassed to journal in public. It feels a bit too precious, a bit too sweet. Journaling pulls up the image of ladies who have nothing better to do (except lunch?) noting delicate words of trivia onto the page. Ack. That’s the last way I want to be seen — and the fact that I worry about it says more about me than about societal mores.
Journaling is more than navel-gazing
But journaling is so much more than writing delicate words about their navel-gazing ideas and their trivial lives. It simply has an image problem. Because journaling can help your writing — and your life — in so many ways.
Writers and visionaries journal
Many famous writers have lauded the benefits of journaling, including Virginia Woolf, Anais Nin (of course), Oscar Wilde, Joan Didion, David Sedaris, and Ray Bradbury, to name only a few. This article has some great quotes from these writers, explaining why writing in journals was so important to them. And this issue of Brainpickings has more wonderful quotes on the theme.
Visionaries, too, have used journals, and these include Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, and Marie Curie.
How journaling helps your writing
Let me see if I can convince you that journaling is worth your time by listing some of the ways I use it and my students and clients use it.
Writing Ideas. I get a ton of ideas for articles, posts, newsletters and novels and stories while writing in my journal. Something about moving pen across the paper unleashes them. I can’t recommend this practice enough, if only for this reason alone.
Writing practice. It is just plain old good practice to write every day in a non-judgemental space, where you’re not worrying about how the words are going to come out, who is going to read them, if it all makes sense and reads well. You’re just writing, flinging words at the page. And that’s the best training there is for writing.
Themes emerge. It’s a good idea to read back over your old journals and mine them for ideas. As you do, you’ll notice themes starting to emerge. Theme is one of the most difficult things to wrap your brain around in writing. If you can start to identify themes that are important to you, you’ll be ahead of the game when it’s time to decide what you want to write about.
Writing is demystified. Writing regularly in a journal reminds you that it’s just writing. And all you have to do is sit down and do it. We make it into a complicated, mystical activity. And it’s not. The successful writers are the ones who get used to just doing it.
It organizes your thoughts. Writing is an organizational activity in many ways. It helps you to know what you are thinking, and what you want to say. There’s a reason doctors and lawyers often make good writers — they’ve had training in how to write in a clear, organized fashion. Often in my daily journaling, I find myself laying out the basic structure of a scene or an article.
How journaling helps you in other ways
I’m a huge believer in personal development. And much of it is aimed toward improving my writing. To my mind, activities that help me personally also help me professionally — it is all linked. So even though the themes listed below are aimed at a more personal angle, they’ll help you in your writing as well.
Historic record. This is top of mind at the moment, what with the rigors of the pandemic upon us. In years to come, historians are going to be very grateful for the journals and diaries we keep that detail what life is like during this lockdown.
Personal history. I have my maternal grandmother’s diaries written over many years and the letters of my paternal grandfather. They are rich treasures, a glimpse into another time. Your family will be grateful for your personal thoughts and feelings some day in the future when they find your journals after you are gone. And if you are a writer (which is likely, since you are reading this article), future scholars will be glad for the insights into the person behind the work. It’s useful for you, too, to remember what happened in your life. Which leads me to my next point.
Calendar. At the end of every year I make plans and goals for the year ahead. I start by going back over my old calendars and leafing through photos. Every year I am struck by how difficult it is to remember what happened on a day to day basis. So this year I vowed to change that. Every morning I sit down and note all the things that happened the day before. This has already come in handy as I look back for details of my unexpected return from France as the pandemic encroached.
Best friend. A journal can be a source of comfort, a place to vent on the page, a way to process your emotions. And let’s face it, this is the kind of crap that gets in our way as writers. Clearing it out will pave the way for your stories to get on the page. Writing is an inexpensive act of self-care.
Themes emerge. Just as with professional writing, when you scribble regularly in your journal, themes about your life will begin to emerge. Reading back over your written pages, you notice longings to see the ocean repeated over and over again. Or urges to start an exercise program. Journaling is a window to the deepest desires of our souls.
Okay, so I’ve convinced you that you need to start a journal. What follows are several of the types you might want to try.
Different types of journaling
Morning pages. These were made popular by Julia Cameron and are a useful tool. The idea is simple — three pages of handwriting, first thing in the morning. Write fast and let the words rip. Writing like this gets all the toxins out and clears the palate for your other writing — and the rest of the day.
Daily record. As noted above, this is a record of what happened during the day. You can write it at night or the next morning. Some people use 5-year or 1-year journals for this, but those are limited in space. Which you or may not like. I find when I’m doing my daily record that I often branch off and write other things, so I like room for that to happen.
Free writing. Pick a prompt and set a timer and write for 15 to 20 minutes. This kind of writing is extremely useful for establishing a regular writing habit. Don’t feel compelled to stick with the prompt — it’s just a starting point. But do keep your hand moving across the page and if you don’t know what to write, write that. You can also always return to the prompt to guide you.
Project-oriented entry. Write about a specific project. When I’m working on a novel, I always have a pad of paper by my side. Sometimes I need to write about the novel, to write around it, not in it. This kind of journaling helps me process what I want to say.
Writing log. Keep track of your writing. What you wrote, how much, when, and how you feel about it. John Steinbeck kept logs during the writing of his most famous novels and they are fascinating to read.
The best kind of journal writing is the one that works for you, the one that benefits your writing, and your personal life as well. I hope this article shows you that it will be useful for you and your writing.