Journaling and the Writer (Episode: Man Versus Table Saw)
By Jan O'Hara | October 17, 2022 |
This is an experiment in rawness. A prototypical journal entry occasioned by a minor crisis, since tidied for clarity. Despite its run-on sentences and stream-of-consciousness disorder, I hope to illustrate how journaling can become an invaluable tool for writers.
When we are a sprawling mass of contradictions, journaling allows us distance from our emotions, so we can set a proactive path forward; that’s certainly good for us as people. But as writers, we can tap into our subconscious, excavating topics, themes—even plotting choices—which can make our content stronger.
A Quick Word on Process
Where you see round brackets, those are part of the original text. Square brackets denote post-journaling commentary.
After years of experimentation, I journal most days of the week at any time, day or night. Basically, whenever I need it. I use an extra-large ruled coil-bound notebook. The informality, familiarity, and sheer page size allow me to feel uninhibited.
Lastly, while this entry was more of an unstructured word-vomit, many days I’ll jot down only the following because they allow me to stay in touch with myself:
- 5 gratitudes—can be as trivial as my morning cup of coffee or as grand as helping my daughter prepare for her recent wedding
- 5 things I am proud of—a mechanism to acknowledge the baby steps taken toward my goals
- 1 small task for improvement—for example, make a vegetable soup from garden produce or call a friend
Onto the Actual Journal Entry…
P hurt his thumb yesterday at 1430. Man versus table saw, which became couple versus decimated healthcare system thanks to 40 years of Conservative rule, Covid, and an aging workforce absolutely no one could’ve foreseen. /sarcasm
[That’ll be this post’s only foray into political-speak, I promise.]
We were in the ER from 1450 until ~2300. After triage, started with a fourth-year medical student—sweet guy but dipped into an unwarranted hard-sell on his capabilities, which only made me doubt them. When he predictably exceeded his skill set, we ended with the CO. [CO= casualty officer, or Canada’s name for an emergency doctor.]
I anticipated the need for a skin graft, but P ended with a primary closure. He has a skin gap of ~3 mm that runs the horizontal length of his finger pad, just below the nail. If he doesn’t get an infection, it should heal okay, so that’s my #1 gratitude. [I’ve excluded the others for the sake of brevity.]
But I’m tired today. And thoughtful.
I got in more people-watching yesterday than I have in the last three years, and I can’t stop thinking about one retired couple in the ER and how distinct they were from everyone else.
The sea of mask-wearing humanity looked like this: P in his sawdust covered overalls, clutching the pressure dressing which was blooming with scarlet despite my overzealous gauze application. (Hey. I did my best after he called on phone intercom to say, in a too-level voice that put me on instant alert, “Would you mind coming downstairs?”) Me in my Costco T-shirt and decade-old tights. Women in spit-stained blouses with babies on their laps. A teenage MVA victim hunched in the wheelchair. (Hopefully won’t develop a driving phobia.) A poor nosebleed guy bent over a garbage can, trying not to vomit. And sooo many people in grip of obesity or the frailty of advanced age.
Then there was them.
Trim. Nice clothing. His expensive haircut and power stance despite appearing to be the patient. (Bet he was a surgeon or Airforce pilot or something comparable.) Her pedicure and designer glasses, and those biceps. Oy. No weekend warrior stuff for her. Tri-weekly sessions with a trainer at minimum, probably at the country club. Bet he’d be similarly ripped under the thousand-dollar down jacket.
Just makes me think of the power of cumulative choices. How they might be privileged, absolutely yes, but they worked over a period of years, one good decision at a time, one effortful moment at a time, to build in resilience. To look like that in a moment of crisis when I looked the way I did.
Like, why do I buy the nice stuff then relegate to someday while continuing to wear the shabby?????
Humans—read me—are terrible at anticipating the future and how we will feel when certain events/crises arrive. But moments like these give an opportunity to glimpse mortality and fragility. We get to decide anew what’s important. We get to recommit. We can battle against frailty one squat and one bowl of oatmeal at a time. Can build a writing career one sentence at a time.
Need to remember, à la James Clear, to reduce goals to smallest achievable unit and build in system for consistency. Then celebrate every win and be grateful I still have time to improve.
[The above is a typical journaling sequence for me. I’ll begin with a factual recounting of a significant event, then transition to naming and processing my thoughts and emotions. Finally, I’ll land on a new or renewed forward path. It’s almost like the scene and sequel of story, except enacted in real life. Thus, my envy and admiration of the retired couple becomes a fresh commitment to long-standing health goals and to taking more care with my appearance. It also encourages empathy for them and myself.]
Am also thinking about how health challenges—because of earned clarity—are excellent for story purposes. Could be the Inciting Incident. Could be moment when character breaks free of societal constraints to pursue desire of heart. Could be when they abandon stale marriage.
E.g. Walter White in Breaking Bad—lung cancer pushed display of arrogant and cruel alter ego he’d always hidden, no matter the cost.
Or Will in Me Before You, who [spoiler alert!] pursues assisted suicide after becomes paraplegic.
Health problems could also be excellent antagonist forces. Addictions and mental health challenges are fab, but possibly overused for unreliable narrators. E.g. Girl on the Train
But what about adding physical problems for antagonistic texture, like someone fighting a migraine aura while giving speech of a lifetime? Cozy mystery protagonist who can’t drive because of epileptic seizure?
[This post is richer than most with respect to writing-related content, but it’s very common for me to think through craft issues, story ideas, and untangle plots on the fly. I typically write hot, then highlight the relevant passages afterward before transferring them to the appropriate Scrivener document.]
We need stories about people who recover from health challenges, or who learn to live with them with humanity and hope intact. (Or who don’t, in which case it can be offered as cautionary tale or philosophical treatise. Like, don’t hang out with your nihilist a**hole of an uncle if you’re coping with something scary, because it’s only going to end badly.)
NOTE: Think I should write a WU article on why, when plotting, might want to consider giving main character a problem with their body or their brain and how that contributes to increased vulnerability and better conflict.
[Beyond plotting and characterization, though,] health crisis stories can make a better society.
P and I played a “game” in the ER—probably inevitable. He’d ask, “What do you think he/she/they are in here for?” and I’d find something plausible. Was partly a way to combat boredom, partly to deal with frustration of eternal wait among people who did not visibly qualify to be there. But I could always find something serious and plausible.
The imaginary justifications calmed him. And weirdly, the process helped me.
I’m in a strangely-strange place right now. The WU UnCon is in session and I long to reconnect. Safest place in the world to see and be seen. Srsly. But I just can’t make myself go beyond displaying an avatar and communicating via chat. #suddenlygutless
[Before journaling, I was vaguely aware of a sense of shame and disquiet around my UnCon behavior. In naming and describing it, though, the intangible becomes concretized and smaller. You can almost see the solution suggesting itself.]
In process of coming up with invisible burdens for P, though? I could almost feel my boundaries softening and myself being reabsorbed back into society. Like good solid chocolate melting into existing puddle on the double boiler.
Probably because, for the most part, I was proud of my fellow Albertans. They wore masks, waited their turn without grievance or yelling, respected triage priorities. They spoke kindly to staff and fellow sufferers. Stoic endurance against backdrop of literal blood, sweat and tears. I felt part of humanity in way I haven’t since before pandemic, and that’s all due to power of empathy.
If story told in POV of a suffering/ill/struggling narrator, inevitable that the writer will develop sense of connection and commonality with character. Then that’s recreated vicariously in the reader.
We’re at a place right now in the world where that feels deeply important. [I see divided families and communities, which can only be helped with better self-awareness and recognition of our commonalities, so we can reunite to face down existential threats.] To get to the place where someone can be sitting in ER with no visible injuries, butt parked in a precious waiting room chair, and on hour six of your wait, instead of becoming irate that they’re your “competition,” you wonder if their mom discovered a scary looking mole and insisted they come in, and they’re thinking it’s a waste of time, but they’ll actually end up with urgent derm referral, skin biopsy, and far worse problems than a bit of pulped thumb pad.
NOTE: thumbpad or thumb pad? >Look it up.
[Even in journaling, the internal editor demands some effort at language precision.]
—
So that’s me, fellow Unboxeders. If you got this far, thank you for your indulgence.
Now it’s your turn. If you don’t journal, have I persuaded you to give it a try? If not, why not? And if you do journal, how often does your practice spark writing insights, as with my focus on health issues as potential driver of conflict?
A USA Today bestselling author, former family physician and academic, Jan O’Hara (she/her) left the world of medicine behind to follow her dreams of becoming a writer. She writes love stories that zoom from wackadoodle to heartfelt in six seconds flat: (Opposite of Frozen; Cold and Hottie; Desperate Times, Desperate Pleasures). Her latest Christmas novella, The Cowboy’s Comeback Christmas, is part of a 9-author-strong anthology (A Cowboy This Christmas: A Sweet Romance Anthology). She also contributed to Author in Progress, a Writer’s Digest Book edited by Therese Walsh.
[coffee]
Thanks for sharing a peek behind the writer’s process, Jan. I do journal sporadically and have for years (I need to get more consistent). But I’ve never thought to make the connection between my emotional state and writing content on paper. Thanks for something to ponder.
Liz, I’m not a fan of adding any other “shoulds” to the writing process, but it’s a tool worth keeping in mind, for sure. Hope you find some use in it.
Also, many thanks for your editorial eye in putting this together.
I, too, journal sporadically, in fact, right now I can’t even find my journal. That’s my excuse for not using it recently. When I do journal I usually work through emotional things and report on things around me. I tend to write mostly NF so this helps find me some new subjects. I can see from my present revisions that I would be helping myself if only I’d been journaling years ago so I would at least have a timeline to follow. Thanks for the prodding.
Andrea, no excuses necessary! As with critique, just take what you find helpful and ignore the rest, and if you got some use out of this, I’m delighted.
Thanks for this peek into your journal. Man vs table saw reminded me immediately of my husband’s altercation with the hedge resulting in a trip to the ER, with three kids in tow and how grateful I was that they weren’t toddlers at the time. They were so good and entertained themselves with stories and games. I always have at least a little catch-all notebook with me so it was great to be able to jot a few notes. That memory is indelibly etched in my psyche and will probably find its way into a story someday.
I started journaling regularly probably 15 yrs ago when I discovered Julia Cameron’s morning pages in Artist’s Way. Before then, it was sporadic. Now I write longhand in my kids’ old half-used spiral notebooks (I hate to waste all that paper) and the process is similar to yours starting with the concrete stuff that leads to reflections and prayers. Lots of times the answers are in there for the story that’s currently in my head or new story ideas I might want to explore. It has also been a tremendous aid in relieving some of the migraines–writing about pain separates you from it. I am not my pain. I toss the journals after a couple of years and this past weekend, purged my office of them after tearing out some of the stickied pages. I’ve told my husband that when I die, he should throw out anything that’s unfinished.
Vijaya, I’ve been to the ER with children, and it’s definitely more challenging than what the ToolMaster and I had to endure.
That’s funny about your spiral notebook use; that’s exactly how I migrated from more formal journals to my preferred medium. Upon my death, P too has instructions to burn my journals unopened. I haven’t had the heart to get rid of any, though it’s rare for me to look back beyond a month or two.
Hey Jan — Such awesomeness sprang from this session! Glad the Toolmaster will be okay. Makes me feel like delving deeper into my day-to-day in written form. I really love the idea of actually enumerating daily gratitude.
Today I’m grateful for having found such a supportive community, for Mama T’s stalwart shepherding of this daily blog, the twelve-year-old version of me for reading LoTR, for Peter Jackson’s version of that story in film (in spite of what he then did with The Hobbit), and most of all, for old friends.
Thanks for the lesson and for the nudge, Jan!
V, the reason I do the gratitude list is that it forces me into a more immediate, less self-indulgent mindset. I become more balanced and intent on seeking the truth, no matter how painful. And WU and it’s community–even yourself as an individual–regularly make the cut. Without it, I doubt I’d be writing today.
Jan, for me, this is awesome. Why? Because I worked in maternity at an inner-city hospital that got into my blood–loved it. But after an event on an expressway after a 3-11 shift, I took at position at a suburban hospital, minutes from my home. MISTAKE. It was never the same and after under a year, I left, did phone nursing for pregnant women on bedrest. Rewarding, yes in its own way. But that first experience lives in my WIP and in my brain. It’s like a fever with no cure. You brought me back today…thanks. PS When I write, I’m there again.
Elizabeth (Beth, as I’m not sure which you prefer), I did my residency in an inner-city hospital, and it’s hard to describe the exact combination of adrenaline, challenge, exhilaration, fear, and despair it could occasion in me. But you’d probably get it. Thank you for your hard work and the necessary compassion it would ask of you. And if this brought you back to a productive reminiscence, I couldn’t be happier.
YES! I’m a convert.
In the past, I’ve seen journaling as navel gazing or as a harmless pastime without tangible benefit. I have demanded from myself a purpose and direction before I write. What. Have. I. Missed!?
The spontaneous expression and propinquity of ideas without visible connection ought to be satisfying, liberating, even epiphanizing (it’s a word now.). It strikes me as a sort of meditation that can produce material for analysis, as well as a way to get all that stuff that built up in there (in me) into either a junk drawer or out in the light where it can be examined. In addition, it suggests that as that stuff is cleared out, the productive stuff may flow more readily. Or I may see more stuff as productive.
Thanks so much for this Jan, and let P know that when I did it, it was the only lesson I ever needed to make me grateful that what happened was far less serious
than what might have happened and to teach me, forever, great respect and caution around a circular saw. Hope he’s doing well.
Bob, what a charming and accurate portrayal of what I’ve found to be journaling’s benefits. Going forward, I hope you’ve been freed to experiment.
I will pass on your kind wishes to P. He’s had a round of antibiotics and it’s early days yet, but so far so good. And yes, I sense a renewed commitment to safety that can only be a good thing. (Hope your own injury wasn’t a bad one.)
Jan, thank you!
This post got to me, and reminded me how valuable Journaling is to the thought process, to empathy, and to really digging deep into your own emotional landscape.
I stopped when my husband died. During his illness it became sporadic, some days too painful to go there. Then my mom was also diagnosed with cancer and she passed 11 months after my guy. Then the pandemic and the resulting isolation.
Your random thoughts reminded me so much of my own process and assessments that I’m moved to begin again.
This was my first WU conference and I lurked and loved it at the same time. This week is SiWC and will be in -person, and I’m terrified and thrilled at the same time to be with writer peeps again. I think we’ve all gone a bit feral through the pandemic (who bothered with make-up or regular haircuts?)
I can’t thank you enough for encouraging me back to the wonder of writing down random thoughts and pondering the life happening around us.
Deborah, my condolences regarding your husband and mom. That’s a lot to handle, especially in the context of the pandemic.
I’ve had periods where the emotions are too potent and fresh to spend the time in deeper examination. And I think it’s wise to listen to yourself, and know when you’re ready or capable of inserting distance. If you take journaling up again, I hope you’ll find it a useful exercise.
“Feral.” What a word, and exactly right for me. Thank you, LOL. I feel both seen and less anomalous in my UnCon behavior.
I journal! Sometimes as a practice, and sometimes only when I’m so overwhelmed that I have to unclog my thought processes by unloading in the journal. Insights always emerge. I should do it every day. But–limited writing time! (If I stopped with the laments, would minutes suddenly multiply?)
Chris, I love the clogged sink metaphor. That’s exactly what it feels like some days.
When it doesn’t, if you have limited writing time, journaling may not be helpful for you. If a story is running hot for me or I’m on deadline, my priority is always fiction, though it takes me about five minutes to do my short list of gratitudes, etc. On the days where the clogged thoughts interfere, it can be more productive to apply the journaling Drano first and then go to fiction. Whatever works, right? Might be worth some experimentation.
Like several others have mentioned in comments, I journal occasionally, but have noticed of late I tend to use my blog as a journal. Sometimes I’ll just write randomly, leave it in draft, then do a rewrite if I think there’s a blogpost in the mess somewhere.
When I read this sentence in your post: Like, why do I buy the nice stuff then relegate to someday while continuing to wear the shabby????? I cracked up. I’d just been thinking about this tee-shirt I’m wearing right now that has to be at least 15 years old, and thought about some pretty tops I have in my closet. Why am I not wearing them? I don’t know how you were raised, but my sister and I were taught to wear “everyday” clothes and save the good ones for school and Sundays. I think I’m still under that influence.
Thanks for giving us things to consider about journaling.
mcm0704, there’s a comment below about the link between journaling and blogging. I can absolutely see how they’d be connected, and how journaling would be a productive outlet for generating ideas and content.
I was fairly certain someone else would find the clothing stinginess to be painfully accurate and funny, as I do. Thank you for laughing. And for letting me know.
Fascinating article and approach, Jan – thank you! This also explains why I’ve seen so little trace of you at OnCon. But one of the tenets of Un/On Con is providing a safe place for attendees to navigate on their OWN terms. So there’s no wrong way to do it.
Back to journaling. I’ve never done it until this year. Faced with a personal problem that was frankly overwhelming my emotions, I started spewing my guts into a Word doc, just to process the emotional overflow I was facing. I had no idea at the time that what I was doing was journaling. But after doing some research and talking to both mental health professionals and numerous therapy veterans, I learned that it was exactly what I was doing.
But what surprised me was the benefit: the fact that I was literally taking something that had been kept exclusively inside my brain, and getting it out of my body and onto the page. I had NO idea that simple act could be so powerful, and so literal, in that it DOES relieve the burden on the mind by letting it go somewhere else – even if it is never to be read again. I’ve found it enormously helpful, and expect to continue to use journaling like an emotional radiator cap, letting off mental steam when needed.
As a writer, I can definitely see the value of journaling for brainstorming, capturing ideas, and simply keeping the tools sharp. But you’ve taken it a step further. Thanks for showing us a VERY practical way to harvest what we may think of as mere spewing, with an eye for turning it into actual WRITING. Nice one!
Hey, Keith, I’m so sorry you had occasion to need an emotional radiator cap. Hope all is well on that front! But in the typically funny, Keith Croninish way, you’ve accurately described journaling’s benefits. Don’t know if this interests you, but they’ve actually done qualitative studies that say we aren’t unique in our appreciation. In one, they went to a company putting a large number of workers through layoffs, divided them into two groups, and gave one instructions on journaling in addition to the usual HR resource help. On average, the ones who journaled did better from a mental health perspective and found jobs earlier. Turns out that journaling invites us to begin one of the most human processes of all–storytelling, with the acquisition of meaning. Basically, people shifted into becoming the protagonists of their own story and used that agency to move forward. They didn’t deny that crisis had visited their lives–in fact, they were more in touch with their feelings than the other group. They just weren’t at their emotions’ mercy for quite as long.
Anyway, pardon the geek-speak. I’ll leave it at that.
Jan, that’s fascinating – thanks for such a thoughtful reply!
I’m embarrassed to be such a latecomer in becoming aware of journaling’s benefits, but it sure came at the right time for me. So I’m evangelizing it whenever I see a relevant opportunity, because I suspect I’m not alone in having been oblivious to its potential power.
Good stuff to geek out about! Thanks again.
Gah, I loved this so much. Reminded me of the golden hey-dey of blogging, where we could just peek into each other’s minds and come away with so much insight, shared experience, new perspective, humor, connection, etc. And of course this has the added bonus of some writing focus as well.
Kristan, yes, we did lose one aspect of connection with blogging’s demise.
So glad you enjoyed this. Thank you for letting me know.
Jan, I loved the acuity of your observations in the emergency room, and your riffing on what brought those folks to their status—and then the potential of using those peeks to build a character, or at least a scene. I wrote a nonfiction piece years back on spending hours in the emergency room with my father and there were many things happening to him and around us, including someone dying there and the consequences of the gathered family being told that.
I do keep a gratitude journal, and try to write in it every workday, but it’s often only a sentence or two. I do keep a sort of journal when I travel, and it includes observations of people and places (and food!). Thanks for the post.
Tom, an ER is a rich source of material. There’s a reason hospital-based drama is a staple of TV. How smart of you to take that experience and make a nonfiction piece out of it. (Hope your papa was okay.)
If that style of journaling works for you, awesome. No sense in adapting what’s functional.
Nice to hear your voice at the OnCon, by the way. I might be partly “feral,” as Deborah accurately described, but I have enjoyed seeing and hearing those of you who are bolder and/or more tamed.
Loved your post. It brought back so many memories of my time as a corpsman in the Air Force. I saw so much–some of it wonderful, some of it horrible–that afterward I couldn’t look at the world the same way.
My journal is half to do list and half conversation with myself. I’m not good about writing in it regularly; once a week is about as good as I can do. I always start with the date and the weather. Most of the time, I’ll continue with what I can see out the window that day, birds at the feeder, and other concrete things. From there, I do some planning. I discuss painting the garage, cleaning the attic, and that sort of household domestrivia. Somehow, thread wanders off without me noticing what is going on. I find that I’ve been rambling on about characters, events that will never appear in the story, ideas for stories I’ll probably never write…. When I run down, I pull out my WIP and slide into that. I don’t know why but that pre-writing dump makes the story writing easier.
I’ve been looking at the Sawstop table saws ever since two of my friends, both experienced woodworkers, let their attention drift and put their hands into the blades of their saws. The Sawstops can tell the difference between cutting wood and cutting flesh. If the sensor says flesh, the saw can bring the blade to a stop quickly enough to prevent a major injury. It might save another trip to the ER in the future.
Bill, I have no doubt your medical experience would change your point of view. Do you use anything you witnessed in those years in your fiction? (Not sure if it’s appropriate for a Canadian to thank and American for their service, assuming I have your nationality right, but I appreciate it anyway.)
Your journaling practice sounds similar in spirit and helpfulness to mine.
Thank you for mentioning the Sawstop. P is contemplating one. It really does take only a momentary attention lapse to change a life. As a matter of fact, the CO told us of a carpenter who’d been building a toy for his grandchild and lost four entire fingers to a table saw just the preceding week.
Thank you.
I didn’t deliberately mine my experiences there for use in my WIP but I bits and pieces crept in. I remember the ER doctor, after an unsuccessful pediatric resuscitation, peeling his gloves off, throwing them down on the gurney, and walking away. A similar bit shows up early in the story.
The one thing that I deliberately used was someone else’s experience. I had a friend who was a ICU nurse at Washington Hospital Center (if I remember right) when Shock Trauma centers were a new concept. She came to me one time and said, “Every night I go into work. Every night I have two patients. Most nights, at least one of them will die. It’s been two years; i can’t take it any more. I’m quitting. I’m taking a job in a doctor’s office doing insurance physicals.” Forty years later, that comment was the basis for the protagonist’s fiance.
I can’t say as I blame your friend. And that sounds like a rich inciting incident or formative event for a character. Well done.
I’ve enjoyed the conversations seeded by your ER visit. Journaling is alive and well. Thank you for the reminder to note blessings daily.
WU conversations are the best, aren’t they, Arvilla? Hope you find the gratitude listing of use.