Shared Experience

Scribbling Together: Writergrrls and Journals

Writing is considered a lonely task and journaling perceived as even more insular. Because I’d grown tired of writing's solitary aspect, I invited other journalers (and the journal-curious) to a discussion in May. Also, I had read some articles and books about keeping this activity fresh and interesting, and I wanted to share these with other members. Far from being a formal class or even a workshop, our gathering consisted of listening to each others’ experiences and sharing helpful approaches we’d picked up along the way.

We began with ice-breaking introductions, including how long we’d been journal writing and what it means to us. Our experiences ranged from those who had been writing since grade school to those who started recently as part of soul searching. I was relieved to see this diversity; it re-emphasized that there’s no one right way to go about writing a journal. Not only this, but it showed that it’s never too late to start.

"I don’t write in my journal daily or habitually. I limit it to notions and images I can’t live without, which are mostly concerned with germinating work."
Jim Harrison

Going into the meeting, I still had a slight prejudice that those who had been writing for longer were "more authentic" writers or at least more expert. Turns out that each of us had our own challenges. Those who had been writing for longer or more regularly sometimes found writing to be a chore. They feared that their writing risked becoming less creative because it was done routinely. On the other end of the spectrum, those who wrote primarily to deal with a crisis or only in response to strong emotion feared that they weren’t disciplined enough. How do I develop poems or essays or novels from impulsive snatches? Am I writing or just wallowing?

"What [the journal] really does is lock up the intimate insidious voice which whispers in my ear, not this, oh no, not this at all."
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

I’d recently finished Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and agreed that I when I started the book, I also had a fear about wallowing. Some days I felt like I would never come up with anything worth publishing and that I was just engaging in sentimental or trivial garbage. However, throughout the process I learned that this was the point. Not only does journaling clear the mind, but there’s a benefit in the process itself. Free from expectations of a deadline or artistic pretenses, I could write about anything, either snippets of a confusing dream or bemoaning the gas in my gut distracting me from writing one morning or a meditative reverie on the thunderstorm outside. Countless times I found myself being pleasantly surprised. Sometimes I even stumbled upon something original.

"The fact that I often forgot what I had written there made the occasional tasty morsel all the more pleasing a ‘find’ years later."
Phillip Lopate

Although many of us valued this process, some had been thinking about developing something more thematic. One woman asked: "How can you find good material for a novel if it’s mixed in with all the other stuff?" I brought up Sheila Bender’s book The Writer’s Journal: 40 Contemporary Writers and Their Journals and how she jots things down on scraps of paper and throws all the related stuff in one box. True, she still has to sort through it, but at least it’s all related. A person could keep more than one of such boxes or keep more than one journal.

We concluded that each approach had its benefits and that no one should feel like there’s a correct way to journal. If it serves the purpose you want it to serve, great! If not, then write about where you want your journal to go. Eventually, it just might take you there.

Creative Journal.com
Tips, exercises and a newsletter to guide you through journaling.

Muted
A combination of online journal and graphics gallery.

Oprah’s Online Journals
Engage in a community of "gratitude journal" writers, or create your own, private journal.

Bender, Sheila. The Writer's Journal: 40 Contemporary Writers and Their Journals. Dell Publishing. © 1997.

Cameron, Julia. The Artist’s Way. Tarcher/Putnam. © 1992.

Johnson, Alexandra. Leaving a Trace: On Keeping a Journal. Little, Brown and Company, Inc. © 2001.

Steering Committee member Annette Young has worked for the Experience Music Project as a researcher, cataloger and writer for their Digital Collection. She continues The Artist’s Way "morning pages" both as a creative and psychological outlet. You can read more about her on the Steering Committee biographies page.