The Case for Journaling
By Barbara O'Neal | May 25, 2016 |
In our current world, documenting the daily activities of life has become commonplace. We chatter on Twitter and Facebook about our observations, frame shots for Instagram, pin pin pin on Pinterest and Tumblr and… and….everywhere. We’re all documentarians, using the material of our lives to connect and entertain and compete, and sell our work.
All that public, public living.
It has its place, of course. I partake and participate as much as anyone (my Facebook habit is obnoxious), but I’ve been thinking a lot about what happens when we do all the living and thinking in public, for an audience. Standing on a stage, orating or showing off our photography skills, is far different from another practice, the time-honored act of keeping a journal. A private journal, one that no one sees, maybe even one that is hand-written. You know, with a pen and a notebook.
For the Whitehall, the Restoration drama that has consumed me over the winter and spring (and which started releasing last Wednesday—you can get the first episode free–hooray!) I read a lot of Samuel Pepys, the famous 17th century diarist who had a crush on the king’s mistress and kept notes on his supper and the numbers of women he wanted to sleep with and a huge number of details on daily life. Ordinary things, like the rain falling every day for weeks, and the river freezing over one winter so that people were skating, and what he drank and what plays he saw. He kept track of his feelings and attempts to be a better man (stop spending so much at the theater, don’t drink so much wine, stay home with the wife, stop lusting over whoever). His ordinary concerns bring home the ordinariness of human living, and also provide a very clear picture of a world lost to us.
Journaling is a powerful act, and I worry lately that all the public living is going to steal away the quieter, more profound act of journaling, which carries rewards that are far deeper and more enduring than the documentary actions of social media. Journaling is messier, deeper, ultimately more honest. It creates a kind of connection to the self, to the diarist’s mind and heart that are not captured any other way.
My first diary was blue plastic with a lock and key, given to me by my uncle when I was in the 4th grade. I wrote in it some, but not every day. It’s surprising to me how much detail there is in the rote recording of events, things that bring back sweet memories now. Ordinary things—the cheesecake my aunt made, the day my grandmother’s dog had puppies and how messy and bloody and shocking it was. The candy we bought with a dime.
From that little diary onward, I have kept a journal. It is in some ways, the work of my life. It’s messy and horrifying and repetitive. (Don’t spend so much on books, drink less wine, go on a diet.) It’s also beautiful and rich, a record of my travels through time and across continents, book fragments and exhortations to get back to work.
Mainly, it’s deeply personal. Me, talking to myself about whatever I happen to be thinking about. A work in progress, worry about a relative, sadness or happiness over events in my life. I write by hand, although I’ve sometimes written on the computer for years in a row, printing out my pages to keep in a notebook. I have returned to Moleskines and writing by hand because I’m more likely to write precisely and clearly when I’m focusing on making sure my handwriting is, if not elegant, at least readable. It’s a good discipline. It’s better writing.
Journaling helps us become better writers. Making time to communicate with oneself, without judgment or censure or the need to be good or elegant or smart, means getting closer to our own beliefs. It means taking time to record details of daily life (the act of puppies being born is messy and bloody), which means we create a better, more usable store of details to use in the work.
It’s also….well, writing. It’s writing practice, and practice is what keeps us growing. Journaling gives us our tools—the pen, the page, the words, the ideas—and allows us to play, and play demystifies the process. Everything we do is made with those tools, and the more comfortable we are with them, the easier the actual work of building books or plays or poems.
If you haven’t tried journaling, give it a shot. Go buy yourself a notebook that feels easy to write in, and a pen you find has good flow, and set yourself a timer two or three times a week to record your thoughts. Maybe before you start work for the day, or at the end of a good writing session. Make it easy, keep it simple, just write about your day in the most ordinary way you can. “I just walked my dog. It took nearly an hour to go around the block, and he started limping at the end. The tulips are blooming and I want to draw them. My mother hasn’t called for a week. My summer clothes are tight and I need to go on a diet.” Mundane things are perfect. Rambling is allowed. Ranting, whining, gloating, planning—all good.
If you want a prompt, try “In the moment….” And write what you see, hear, observe, and then go into feeling and thinking. Or don’t.
Start there. Get a habit going. If it feels strange at first, that’s okay. No one is ever going to see it. It’s yours! It’s private! No one needs to read it at all. Ever. You can even, if you like the idea of being super secret, buy a box and keep the journal inside and hide it or even lock it. It’s yours. Your thoughts, your ideas, secret.
And therein lies the deepest value: the privacy allows truth to bubble up. If we record everything in public, we’re always aware of the audience. In a journal, the audience is only ourselves. It’s freeing.
What I know for sure is that it will make you a better writer over time. Give it a try.
If you do not keep a journal or diary, what has stopped you? If you do, what are some of the rewards? And do you have rituals you can share with us?
[coffee]
Barbara O’Neal is the author of more than a dozen award-winning, bestselling novels, including the runaway bestseller, When We Believed in Mermaids, which has been published in more than 20 countries and spent many months on the Amazon Charts, as well as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Washington Post bestseller lists. Barbara lives on the beach in rugged Oregon with her husband, a British endurance athlete who vows he’ll never lose his accent and their zoo of cats and dogs. You can find more information on her newsletter and where to find her on social media at barbaraoneal.com.
Like you, my first diary was blue with a lock and key. Unlike you though, Barbara, I don’t believe I’ve saved it. Too many moves, too many little books to keep. But I totally agree. Journaling was my first introduction to translating thoughts into words and one of the methods which prepared me to be a writer. I still journal now–although a lot less often–but you are right, it is a private pursuit worthy of time and effort. I guess I need to go dig our my current one. Thanks for the reminder.
Those blue plastic journals are still available, which I find remarkable.
Glad you feel prompted.
Barbara-
Wasn’t it Peyps who awoke one night to find his wife looming over him holding a fire tongues heated to red hot, snapping them at his genitals? Ordinary details of everyday life? Extraordinary events, too.
I recently went through my college notebooks and clippings, everything from my first published poem to playbills and the records of my semi-stalking of my hopeless college crush. Wait, I saw both Lawrence Olivier and Patrick Stewart on stage? A TV crew captured me capsizing a sailboat, with a girl onboard? Who was she?
Those records are as valuable for the mysteries they raise as for the memories. I marvel at the stranger I used to be. I drank café au lait in Rouen? Early music conductor Christopher Hogwood gave me his phone number? I met John Gardner? Paper lasts, if only to preserve what we no longer know.
I like what you say about communicating with yourself, but I must say I have as many questions for young me as anything! Great post, Barbara.
Wait, you met John Gardner? Wow.
I find the things I actually recorded are often quite surprising in relation to the things I think I remember. It’s crazy how different they are at times.
Also, I don’t know if that was Pepys who awakened to find his wife standing over him, but one can understand why his wife would be so tempted. Not the most faithful fellow of all time.
Terrific post, full of insight. There is quite a difference between documenting our lives and journaling. Your piece hails to Julie Cameron’s time-tested tome, The Artist’s Way, and her advocating for Morning Pages. Whatever we call it, let’s do it. Write for ourselves. Thanks, Barbara. I love your writing.
Thanks, Rose!
I used to have one of those little lock-and-key books as a child, but the habit didn’t quite take: I was always either forgetting to write or running out of room in the “assigned” space. Then in high school I started using blank books, and I made it a rule to write every night before bed–even if just to say “I’m too tired to write today.” I’ve kept the nighttime diary ever since, and if it may perhaps make for dry reading (I haven’t checked lately), it definitely helps me put down my thoughts and concerns a bit each night and get to sleep.
I tend to do a morning page/warmup most days that has also evolved into a little journal: often I speculate on what I’m trying to do that day, or getting my worries out of my system, or giving myself a little pep talk–just 10-15 minutes of ink flowing on the page, and then I get to work.
Benjamin, I had to smile at your lost memories…my most complete/extensive journal is from the time I was studying in London in college, and there are definitely bits in there that have me thinking, “you mean I did that? or saw that?” :-) It’s amazing what gets lost in the back archives of the brain.
Wonderful post, Barbara! Thank you.
That 10 or 15 minutes at the start of the day can save me hours, actually. I don’t do “morning pages” as Julia Cameron presents them because I get too whiny. :) Not sure what it is about that particular method that taps into my petulant side, but there it is.
Travel/study journals really are such a delight later!
Oh I can definitely wander into the whiny! But I either try to get things off my chest (leave them on the page) or redirect them…a skill that needs constant practice. ;-)
Barbara–
Journal writing is “also….well, writing.” Exactly. And as you usefully remind us, journal writing is for an audience of one, the writer. Put that together with a habit of occasional writing for others–not long narratives, but blog entries, say–and something valuable is going on: the “thing itself,” the writer alone, unkempt and disorderly but candid in the most direct sense, plus the self that’s spiffed-up and spruced-up to meet company. Two halves that make a whole. Thanks for this useful post.
Love that, Barry, the writer alone, unkempt and disorderly, but candid. Exactly. Me in yoga pants with messy hair or me in my Author Dresses and lipstick.
Yes! I started journaling last fall for many of the same reasons and (ironically?) blogged about why. I’ve loved reading Virginia Woolf’s very honest and often amusing diary (especially the ways she describes her friends and enemies) and I’ve been frustrated at the too-wide-of-an-audience aspect of Facebook and Twitter, wherein you get commentary from people who don’t understand you, don’t know the complexities of your thoughts on a wide range of subject, and nearly always think the worst of you, or you get do-gooders and know-it-alls who butt in with unsolicited advice about what was really just you musing about something. So I put those musings in my journal now. And all those times I’ve been tempted to complain about something online and didn’t because I didn’t want to “seem negative” I now put in my journal. It’s where I can document my small triumphs and failures without people assuming I’m bragging or fishing for praise.
In the past I’ve felt that if I didn’t keep up regularly with a journal I had to start a new one (what does that say about my personality?) but now I don’t care if there are large gaps. Later in life if I ever look back (or if some descendant gets a hold of it and can read my terrible handwriting) I think there could be meaning in those gaps as well.
Thanks for this post, Barbara!
Well, here I am, blogging about the case for private journaling, too.
I haven’t read Virginia Woolf’s diaries. I’ll have to make a point of it now.
I absolutely believe in the power and value of journaling. Ironically however, I have grown to journal less and less. One of the things I have found is that the harsher life is, the less I journal, which is probably the opposite of what everybody else does. And likely should do. But for me, I don’t want to relive the nightmares again on the written or typewritten page.
So nowadays, while I still keep a journal every month, it’s more a place marker for reminding myself when something was accomplished or the occasional unusual note. But not the serious journaling that I did years ago.
I don’t know that there are any rules about journaling. If it seems too much to live through bad things over again, a monthly journal seems a good way to go about it.
In my own journaling practice, I find the journals during times of great drama or stress are not as coherent, and even more repetitive than usual. I go over the same things again and again…but that’s my method of getting to the heart of a thing.
Perhaps if things settle, you’ll find pleasure in the process again.
I love journaling (have filled 128 since 1987!) and hate blogging.
Kay Ryan once wrote, “”The only real access that I have to my mind is when I’m writing.” That’s a big reason why I’ve long kept a journal. I often write my way into an understanding of what I’m thinking or feeling, something that I can’t always grasp without putting my pen to the page. Sadly, I don’t have the journals that go back to before college, but I have most since then. I don’t write daily, and there are gaps of months (or even years) when I didn’t journal. That said, journaling is something I’ve done since long before I claimed the title “writer” for myself.
Great quote. That’s how it is for me, for sure. I only really hear my thoughts when I’m writing. Thank you.
Ruth, This is why when I get stuck in my writing, I jot down notes or open a “not-for-real” document and just let it spill. Something about telling myself that it doesn’t count (as in journaling) lets me think more freely.
Here’s another idea, Barbara. As the grandmother to 5, I’ve started journals for each one of them. Writing little snippets when I’m with them or things their moms tell me. It’ll be a unique gift to them at some point in the future!
Carol, those journals for the grandkids is going to be a great treasure for them.
I’ve written letters to my kids at various ages, but they won’t get to read them until they are settled with kids of their own.
That quote is new to me… as a quote. The way I’ve always put it is, How do I know what I think before I see what I write?
In a difficult time in my life, I wrote every morning on the computer, not in a journal, my morning pages. And I could pour out my sorrow and my pain and it was very helpful. I have kept journals now and again. I still have them all and lately have reread some of them to fire up ideas for more writing. I also have my first diary, it was red with a lock and key and it provides a glimpse into my growing self. Great post today, Barbara. Thank you.
I was born in London, and although my memory is hazy, we lived in a flat that had once been a large house. It was said that Samuel Pepys saw the fire of London from its garden. He documented it in his journal. When I was small I imagined his name was spelled Peeks, because he was always peeking at life and writing about it.
I recieved my first official diary as a gift on my 10th birthday. A pale shade of pink with golden thread across the cover and a little gold key. The pages were divided into sections that added up to 4 years. I remember thinking I’d be the impossible age of 14 when the journal was complete. A lofty age and a teenager no less. I just couldn’t fathom myself that way.
Love this post. I think I may keep a little journal again. Because the ordinary is really quite extraordinary when we’re looking back and wondering where it’s gone.
I love that you lived in that house!
Exactly–the ordinary is the extraordinary.
Lovely reminder of how important it is to reconnect with the writer within.
Journaling has come back into my life big time as I transition away from a need to publish, and reinvest in personal expression. The process is freeing, long overdue and exactly where I need to be.
Wonderful post, Barbara! It’s all writing, as you say, so nothing is wasted, even the whiny parts. Having kept a journal for many years, I can attest to the power of writing by hand. There seems to be a unique connection between the hand and the soul.
My favorite New Yorker cartoon from a few years ago, which I’ve probably mentioned in this venue before:
Mom and daughter are in the attic, going over old stuff. Mom is giggling over her yearbook. Daughter, reading her mother’s old diary, looks up and asks, “What was the point of writing a blog that nobody else could read?”
Thank you! I needed a kick-in-the-pants to start my journaling and I think you’ve done it.
“Journaling is messier, deeper, ultimately more honest. It creates a kind of connection to the self, to the diarist’s mind and heart that are not captured any other way.”
That ‘message from you’ pulled at my soul. It reminded me that journaling is the deeply quiet time when the busyness of the world melts away and I’m alone with my thoughts. It also reminded me that the deeper I go into my own life experiences at the end of each night (hopefully every night if I make that time), the deeper I’ll be able to drill into the layers of my characters and their stories.
Instead of Netflix horror movies before bed, I’m diving into my journal.
I’m so glad you heard the thing you needed to hear. Funny how that works sometimes.
Lovely post, Barbara. I’ve been writing in a journal off and on since childhood but I always threw them away. The fear of someone else reading private thoughts was always high on my mind because we lived in close quarters — a room and a kitchen. There was very little privacy. My family now is much different and we have space, so I keep the notebooks (simple composition notebooks) for a few years before tossing them. I also have some pretty journals given to me as gifts and these I can’t bear to part with … too bad, the writing inside isn’t stellar.
I love how portable a notebook is. I can scribble a few thoughts at ball games or swim meets or even church! It’s a catch all place for not just ideas but information. But I mostly write at home with my Mont Blanc fountain pen — I bought it as a gift for myself when I earned my PhD over 20 yrs ago. It’s the most extravagant thing I own and it’s mine :) It leaks since out kittens dropped it on the floor, and I get inky fingers but I won’t trade it in for anything.
What a great gift to give yourself. I have been thinking of buying myself a really great fountain pen for some major event. Or maybe because I would just love it.
I, too, had a red, locked diary. I it was given to me on my birthday, my fourth grade year. I loved it, and the secrecy it provided.
But my brother stole and broke into it, and then humiliated and teased me. It has made me shy of journaling my whole life.
Now I’m seventy. On January 6th, I started a password-protected Word document, and I journal there. (My husband would never open it; he’s so trustworthy, but I simply can’t leave it unprotected. I’m still startled by how held back I feel, stemming from my brother’s innocent meanness. Nonetheless, I’m continuing. I want a record!
What a painful experience! It’s wonderful that you’ve found a way to make yourself feel safe enough to write a journal now. Go, you!
I’ve kept a journal for decades, neglecting entries only on occasion, principally during the years when my children were small. As a professional writer most of my life, I’ve used my journals often in my writing, for detail, ideas and so much more.
When my kids were little, I used my humorous column as an outlet for thoughts and feelings I had about our family. That wasn’t a true journal though, as I only wrote about funny stuff or things that made me happy, with the exception of a few rants about school issues.
Love the post, Barbara. I have kept a journal off and on for many years, too often off, but I have a hard time with it at times. I have never tried to figure out why, but maybe I should. :-)
You’re singing to the choir, Barbara. I couldn’t agree more.
I’ve found journaling a very useful tool for keeping me focused as I build my writing career.
Related to the Pepys journal, someone suggested that I write down my history and that of my family for my grandkids and future generations have to read about their family. I intend doing that. But not today.
I journal to tame the many and varied thoughts in my head, to keep me sane. I journal to discover what I think and believe. Journaling shows me what’s ridiculous and needs dismissed as well as what needs more attention. Journaling exists as an extension of my brain.
“Me, talking to myself about whatever I happen to be thinking about.” Yes, that’s why I’ve kept a journal since college days. I think best when writing; my mind doesn’t wander as much.
I don’t write in it every day, though often enough to fill a spiral-bound notebook every year or two. On New Year’s Day I make a point of rereading the previous year’s entries.
Thanks for a thoughtful article, especially for contrasting public documentation with private. They are so different and serve different purposes. One is to create a conversation with the world, The other is to have a conversation with yourself.
I got my first diary when I was 13 and wrote sporadically in it into college. Then I bought my first bound blank book. It took several years to fill that one, too, and I wrote in a couple of others at the same time. Once my first son was born, I began to write regularly during his nap time and the habit developed. I now have over 200 journal/sketchbooks, numbered and labeled by date. All my art and writing originates in my journals and I go back to them over and over. I write by hand with a real fountain pen and Pelikan Fount India Ink.
Two suggestions for developing the habit of keeping a journal:
1. Develop a heading for each entry–something you don’t have to think about. That way your pen is already moving. I begin each entry by writing out the day, date, location, time, and weather. Example: 1) Sunday, May 29, 2016, Santa Fe, mild and clear, about 70 degrees.
2. Know and accept that you will not write every day. You may go for days or weeks at a time not writing. Don’t beat yourself up. Make writing in your journal a gift you give to yourself, not a job or chore or test. Any day you write is a good day. There are no bad days.
I’ve been keeping a regular journal since 1983. For 30 years, I compiled all of my thoughts into spiral-bound notebooks. Then, in mid-June of 2013, I had a freak accident here at the house that severely damaged my right arm and made hand-writing difficult. I’m somewhat ambidextrous, but I was forced to switch my journal to a digital format. Regardless, it still serves its purpose: it’s therapeutic, both physically and emotionally. Currently I’m enduring a serious crisis with the health of both my parents. Even my dog is showing signs of age-related distress! Whether it was on tangible paper or now on a Word document, my journal is a source of comfort. I always feel better (empowered?) afterwards. It doesn’t make all the bad things in life go away; nor does it make the good things last forever. But it allows me to move forward. I recommend journaling for anyone – even the non-writers.