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One of the most frequent suggestions for ways to improve your writing is to do more of it! Almost every writer who is serious about the craft recommends that you set a specific time and write every day, keeping a record, or journal, of your thoughts and feelings, your reactions and responses to important questions and issues in your life — more than just a diary of a few notations about the weather,
who you talked to, what you wore, what you ate, etc. You might make the distinction between the two this way:
• A Diary or Log is a description of daily events: what happened in your life on a single day. It is “just the bare facts.”
• A Journal might contain those things, but it is much more likely to contain your reflections on what took place; it allows you to express your emotions and understandings in response to these events, and it may become a series of ongoing, related pieces of writing. Some people write the first drafts of their poems, stories, or essays directly in their journals, as a way of keeping track of when they began to think about them or what prompted them.
But most of us shrink from this simple idea, often feeling that we have nothing to say, or no time in which to work on it, or any of dozens of other excuses. Even if we recognize that daily writing is something we’d really like to get in the habit of doing, it can be daunting to strike out on our own, and we wish for a guide to help us get started on this venture.
Well, search no more! This is where we can help you — with solid teaching materials and an enjoyable project for you and your students. Here are some ideas and suggestions, as well as links to other resources, which can help you as a teacher, and also your students, to become more fluent as writers.
To help make it easier for you — and for your students — we’ve prepared a journaling booklet in PDF format, so that all you need to do is print out one copy and then follow these instructions for photocopying and assembling them.
Making your Journal
- The pages are printed on regular 8 ½ x 11 paper, so there are two journal pages on each sheet. Download all 10 pages and organize them into sets, putting 1 and 2 together, 3 and 4, and so on.
- Decide how many copies you need, and begin by printing that many plus two of page one (the extras are “insurance” in case there is a problem when you print the back side).
- If you have access to a high-end copier, you may be able to print both sides at once. Otherwise, return the printed pages to the paper tray in such a way that you can now print page two on the back side of page one.
- Continue these steps, printing page three on blank paper, and page four on the back, then pages five and six, etc. When you are finished, you should have five sets of printed pages.
- Once all the pages have been printed, each sheet must be folded in the center. Make sharp creases. Fold all of one page, and keep them in a stack, then the next page, and so on.
- After all the pages are folded, the booklets can be collated. Line up the stacks so that you pick up the center page first, then put the next one over it, then the next, ending with the outside page. Place this booklet on a new stack and continue the collating process.
- Binding the booklets can be easily done with a long-reach or "saddle" stapler placing two staples on the crease, or you can punch four to six small holes along the center fold and using colored yarn, string the thread through the holes. Tie it off on the outside.
Other Web Sites to Visit
Here are some links to other web sites which have good ideas and suggestions regarding journaling. Do keep in mind, however, that these are not specifically poetry-oriented, so you may need to be selective (i.e., “pick and choose”) which of the suggestions and techniques will be helpful to you.
Learn how to start journaling. It’s a ritual worth the time.
This web site includes sections on:
• What is journaling?
• 5 types of journaling
• Benefits of journaling
• The importance of journaling
• What to write in a journal
• How to start journaling (and make it a habit)
• How beginners can keep the habit
17 Journaling Tips for Beginners (And How to Start)
Dee, who was born in Poland, raised in Arizona and California, and now lives as an expat in Cairo, offers her ideas on how to become successful at journaling, including some quotable comments along the way. Good photography throughout; short, succinct sentences and brief paragraphs make her suggestions impactful.
Other journaling topics at her Vanilla Papers website include:
• 14 Life-Changing Journaling Techniques
• 16 Powerful Benefits of Writing by Hand
• 18 Incredible Journaling Benefits (And How to Start)
6 Journaling Benefits and How to Start Right Now
and 9 super simple tips to start
Journaling may help reduce stress, boost health and well-being, encourage distance from negative thoughts, provide a way to process emotions, help you figure out your next step, and deepen self-discovery.
Some tips to building good journaling practices include: start small, perhaps by writing for only 2 to 5 minutes a day, use simple tools, try free writing, refrain from self-censoring or editing, schedule the same time to write each day, focus on a specific incident each day, avoid re-reading recent entries, explore a prompt, and take a different point of view.
Some Good YouTube Videos on Journaling
How to Journal
A 10 ½ minute YouTube video worth watching more than once, covering many of the questions and suggestions newcomers often need..
5 Ways to Journal (and Why You Should)
Jared Henderson says “a thread throughout history is that very creative intellectual reflective people kept a journal.” Why?
• Most of them were people of a daily routine.
• Journaling allows us to process our thoughts in a judgment-free environment.
• It can be psychologically powerful to have a pre-defined space in your life
where you can just think about yourself.
Here are some ways to journal:
- Freewriting: you simply write as quickly as possible with no concern for formal structure. The challenge is to be able to find the good stuff that you wrote.
- Morning Pages: first thing in the morning, write three pages of stream-of-consciousness in an effort to get away from that judgmental voice in our brain which stops us from being able to write.
- Five-Year Journal: a long-term journal in which you write on the same page on the same date for five years. OK for brief statements, but space is limited.
- Bullet Journaling: another kind of organizing structure.
- Commonplace Book: a collection of anything you find interesting throughout the day. Works well when combined with one of the other types of journaling.
- Reading Reflections: your thoughts about what you’ve been reading.
5 Life Changing Journaling Habits from the Stoics
Ryan Holiday, who does videos as The Daily Stoic, gives these important practices from the Stoics. They are:
- Just Start. Don’t stress; just do it, even if it’s one line a day in the beginning.
- Use a physical journal. The advantages to writing longhand are numerous, and the journals that Da Vinci wrote 700 years ago are still accessible, while the things we did two iPhones ago are already lost.
- Write for yourself. What you write is not to please others, it is to help you with what you are struggling with.
- Get it out of your head. Sometimes you need to have distance between you and your thoughts to see clearly what you actually think.
- Have dialogue with yourself. You can have a creative practice with very low stakes, what Julia Cameron called spiritual windshield wipers.
Final Thoughts
While these web pages and videos (as well as others) can be helpful to anyone getting started with journaling, most of them have a specific point of view which differs from ours in some respects. We want you to learn through the practice of journaling how to find in your own writing phrases and ideas which can lead to the creation of poems. Thus, we suggest the following points to keep in mind:
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It can be helpful to write a reaction to an event or incident, especially an emotional one, and then go back and read it a month or few weeks later, to see whether there are words or thoughts which can help to generate a poem.
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It is good to make notes of the specifics of a thing at the time you write, so you can describe it in more and clearer detail when you use it in a poem. Here’s an example: the rancher’s hands were rugged and calloused, and his shoulders and biceps bulged beneath his shirt as he ….
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It is good practice to go to a thesaurus and find as many similar meanings as possible for a word that intrigues you. Recognize that each meaning differs from the rest in some way, and try to learn what those differences are and how they have been used effectively by other poets.
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It is often helpful to spend several days writing —exploring— some word or phrase or idea that fascinates you; but then find a different topic or style and work on that for the next few days.
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