I have kept a journal, or diary (if you prefer the term less in vogue these days), on and off since I was a teen. I journaled more during the good times than the bad. Sometimes, I wasn’t able to face myself, which is what you do when you write.
Although writing can be therapeutic, there were times when I couldn’t write, couldn’t face myself. I think even now it’s difficult for me to write about an experience I haven’t rolled around in my brain for a while.
Eventually, however, I became more serious about being a writer and an integral part of being a writer is journaling, right? A writer writes. Every day.
Bleeding fingers
So I wrote until my fingers bled. I wrote pages and pages in notebooks. I would finish journaling and, satisfied I had written that day, wouldn’t write anything else.
I finally admitted I wasn’t writing. I was journaling. At that moment, I realized the distinct and terrible difference between the two. I was recording the mundane aspects of my day and not doing any real writing.
I wasn’t only “recording the mundanities” of my life. At times, I was in therapy, facing myself, working through issues, solving my troubles. Undoubtedly.
That’s not writing, per se.
At least, it wasn’t the kind of writing I wanted to be doing. I wasn’t writing or finishing fiction stories, novels, essays, or ebooks. I wasn’t producing any completed piece of writing. I had fooled myself into “being a writer” by mindlessly journaling for years.
I was a person who journaled and nothing more.
Just say no
One day, I said, “I’m not going to journal anymore.”
I don’t remember whether or not I actually said that out loud, but the point is I had to give myself permission to not journal. That’s how I freed myself from an activity that had kept me from real writing.
It was a hard decision. Stopping felt weird. Journaling was so ingrained in me not only as something a writer DOES, but also what a real writer SHOULD DO.
I felt free. A pressure I hadn’t truly acknowledged had been lifted.
And here’s what happened next: I began writing.
I mean, I really began writing – stories. And haiku. I joined a writing group. I started to finish stories, and they didn’t suck. Not entirely anyway. I even had a short story published in an online journal for kids. I landed a job as a copywriter. And then later as a technical writer. And then I started this blog.
More importantly, I realized what had been missing from my journaling all along – focus.
Focus
If you want your writing to go anywhere, focus is mandatory.
Understanding this was a major epiphany for me. Deep down I probably knew I avoided “real” writing because I didn’t know what to write and couldn’t admit that. I never journaled about that . . . it wasn’t something I could consciously face.
Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages, journaling at its best, are three pages of freehand writing completed first thing in the morning. I researched Morning Pages while writing this blog post, and did them for several days. The practice wasn’t a good fit for me, though, and didn’t stick.
Morning Pages are therapeutic, however, and can help you solve problems. According to Cameron, they even prevent troubles. She openly calls Morning Pages not art but the path to creating art.
Through my dabbling with Morning Pages, I came to better understand the difference between journaling and writing, which are similar activities, sure. For each, you take a pen to paper, or put fingertips to keyboard.
But, the intention you bring to each is quite different. Journaling can inform the parts of your writing that are art. Much of my own writing today begins on paper, often in whatever notebook is serving as my current journal.
At peace with journaling
I now write daily because my jobs demand it – I’m a technical writer and a blogger. I journal when the mood strikes me although not every day. It’s an activity I do when I can enjoy it, or to record a moment in time, or to jumpstart my creative juices. Doodling in a notebook for five minutes can warm up my writing muscle. See Lynda Barry on the state of being that becomes unlocked through the physical act of taking pen to paper. (A topic I’ll write more about in an upcoming post about writer’s block.)
At times, I have journaled to work through a problem. But journaling no longer takes the place of my “real” writing, and I don’t use it as an excuse not to write.
In the comments, I’d love to hear how you use journaling to complement or enhance your other writing projects.