What are your journaling tips?

In My Humble Opinion
1

The thread on Moleskine notebooks led me to post this. I really want to start keeping a paper journal. I don’t feel that I can be as personal on my Livejournal (for the uninitiated, that’s a journal you keep on the Internet) as I’d like, and I also feel that the medium is detrimental to the writing, cheapens it somehow. I have tried keeping a paper journal in the past, but four things always block me:

  1. Perfectionism: I’ll admit, I am an editor. Whenever I write a post on Livejournal I have to edit the hell out of it because there you write for an audience. I feel like this causes me to be less spontaneous and gives my personal writing an unnatural feel. But when I look at a page of blank paper I feel totally blocked because it’s like every word has to count. I don’t know how to rectify my desire to be “open” and my need for my writing to be perfect, which I need it to be even though I will be the only one who reads the journal.

  2. Physical issues: When I write longhand, my hand cramps up a lot. I don’t have any hand problems, I’m just used to typing, having grown up with a computer. I’ve only handwritten things when I’ve had to. As a result, I can only write about a page before having to quit. It’s easier when I use a pen that has a light touch like a rollerball or very fine felt tip, but I still feel some pain, which affects my desire to write.

  3. Motivation: Whenever I think about writing a very long post in my LJ, there’s some part of me that asks, why am I doing this again? Some of my fiction-writing friends say that keeping a journal is stupid because you should be putting that energy into your fiction, are they right? It feels awfully self-indulgent to spend even ten minutes navel-gazing and writing down your thoughts, especially when that writing is not meant to be shared. Why do you people who journal do so? I know I have a desire to do it but I don’t know why and it feels like I shouldn’t be “wasting” my writing that way.

  4. Structured thinking: Also due to my fiction writing background I have a need to “structure” my journal entries in a narrative fashion, so I have a hard time putting down my thoughts because they go through a lot of “filters.” Does this make any sense? What will stop me from being so narrative-minded and focused on the end product of the writing, rather than the journey? Basically, I think I need a crash course in thinking spontaneously.

Any advice for overcoming these things? Also, is it a good idea to set page or entry goals like you do when writing a novel? Thanks in advance!

2

Why don’t you just use your computer?

3

Because of the whole “editing/perfectionism” thing mentioned in point 1. My personal journal feels fake because I have to edit the hell out of it, even when I make private (viewable only to me) entries on LJ, and probably even if I just made a Word document. I would like to be more spontaneous with my journaling.

4

I don’t journal regularly, but I have carried a journal with me on my foreign travels and recorded enough of my activities, the food, and my thoughts and feelings to make something that people have enjoyed reading.

My thoughts for you:

  1. Don’t be obsessed with wordcount, pagecount or time limits. Spend as much or as little time writing as your schedule and your inclination permit.

  2. Write frequently. Get in the habit of putting things into your journal. If you go to a museum, or a job interview, or a hike-- write about it. If you don’t do anything “worth” writing about, write about the mundane things of your day or week. Reminisce about your childhood-- or daydream about your future.

  3. If being a writer of fiction appeals to you, then by all means write fiction in your journal. But make sure you can tell the difference between a daydream and the beginnings of a story about someone else.

  4. No two people are alike, no two writers are alike, no two fiction writers are alike. Writing a journal may or may not make you a better fiction writer–so don’t let other people’s opinions influence what you write too much. Your job is to make YOUR writing grow. Besides, I heard on NPR recently a comment that it used to be that many first novels were accused of being auto-biographical. That is less true today, with the popularity of the Memoire. Still, there is no reason that your journal today couldn’t be the start of something bigger–but it may not be either.

5

For your hand cramps, you might want to pick up a book on handwriting and see if you can adjust your grip on the pen, or even just retrain yourself to relax your hand more as you write. This would be a somewhat time-consuming process, requiring practice, but it would also yield benefits beyond just journal writing.

For your issues with perfectionism and structure, one approach would be to make a conscious choice to make your journal an unbridled, wild, unrestricted writing space. You have your LiveJournal for polished peices, but your physical journal is just for you to get your thoughts out on the page and play with them. The “perfect” journal entry will be an unorganized, wandering tour of your mental state at the moment. You can use some of the tricks used for brainstorming: write down everything that pops into your head without applying any criticism to it, never go back and cross out or rewrite or fix spelling, etc.

You’re yearning to try a different medium, so make it a really different writing experience. Play up the advantages of the medium. You can write in your physical journal anywhere, so carry it with you and write in all kinds of crazy places. (Yeah, yeah, yeah, at the park, in the cafe, in your car, in bed. Also, in the restroom at work. In a pitch-black closet. In the produce section.) You can doodle. You can tape things into it. You don’t have to write in straight lines. (Definitely get a journal with blank, unlined pages!) You can keep it securely hidden away so no one else ever sees it, so you’re free to be experimental, repetitive, sappy, sloppy, profane, offensive, self-indulgent, whiny, angry… whatever’s in your head at the moment.

Good luck with it.

6

Not sure how I missed this thread when it was new, but it’s not too old, so. . .

I just found this site on notetaking the other day, and it has some things which I found useful, particularly the sections on “Commonplace book” and “Write it Down.”

I also try to check out diyplanner.com every day or two. Although it’s the home of a (really nice) free printable planner, the blog seems to go all over the writing landscape. Friday’s entry was “On Personal Journaling,” for instance, and a little earlier they had “An introduction to journaling.”

7

I don’t know if this will help at all, davenportavenger, but the only thing that finally worked for me was to flip a mental switch. Same problems as you, exactly. Heck, errors in menus–forget newspapers and books–drive me crazy. I’m infamous at work for reworking reports way beyond the point anybody else cares.

Even the word ‘journal’ threw me off, mainly because so many of 'em ended up as primary source material for historians. The mere possiblity that somebody else might ever, by sheer mischance, ever actually read it pretty much stalled the whole process. I finally got over it by considering it as notes to myself, for myself. I don’t worry about notes being perfect. I use highly eccentric abbreviations, symbols, etc. all the time in notetaking. Whole 'nother category, y’know?

I’ve read about authors who keep informal notebooks of ideas, reflections, observations. They aren’t writing; that comes later. The notebooks are just the starting point to capture thoughts, impressions, whatever, that might be refined later. They’re the mines, not the Fabrege craft room.

As for the writer’s cramp thing, maybe your years as a student might help. Your habit might be different, but I unconsciously use a much looser grip and script for notetaking. It just kicks in, possibly because the mental gear is for lots of info at speed, not precision. Not worrying about neatness or correctness frees up the flow. I can use arrows to follow-up thoughts (few lecturers stick to rigid outline format anyway), plug in little sketches, polish some things up a bit if the flow allows, whatever.

It might not work for you but keeping a writer’s notebook might be less intimidating than a journal-journal. Hope this helps, but good luck no matter what, davenportavenger.

Veb

8

I have the same trouble as you do, with my hand cramping up when writing longhand. I can reduce it, although not eliminate it altogether, by using technical pens. They’re made to roll smoooooothly, so your drawings don’t wind up with ink blots all over. My brand is Uniball, but some high-end Pilot pens are also nice. The way they glide make it feel more like your mind is making marks on the paper by magic.

I keep an online journal instead of a handwritten one, largely because I type FAR faster than I pen things and I get impatient with having to finish writing a word before I can start another. I often edit entries like you do, but I don’t usually have to revamp them much; I keep the journal in the first place because I have a continual life-narration running in my head, kind of like the voiceover in The Wonder Years, and it’s geared for an imaginary audience anyway. :smiley:

I’ve never noticed journaling, either freeform or in an LJ, making a difference in how I organize my fiction writing. Mostly what it does is provide me with an outlet for things that would otherwise intrude on the writing process, so I don’t end up sitting there staring at the first half of a sentence and worrying about how I did on the math quiz that morning instead of finishing it. This also kind of answers the question of why: otherwise I would be pacing my room, talking a blue streak to myself, at four in the morning, because the narration is all still sloshing around inside my head.

Not that I do not pace the room talking to myself at four in the morning. But after I’ve vented to a LiveJournal, it normally turns from griping to having conversations with myself, while I work out dialogue for imaginary people. :slight_smile:

9

If you go by what he explains journalling as… then I’ve had one for years. I just never called it that (it’s always just been my notebook).

I just write. Story or character ideas, anything that catches my eye/ear, lists, quotes, poems (though the last hasn’t been in awhile). My notebooks are a hodgepodge of many different things and I hardly leave home without a notebook in my bag.

One thing I found that minimizes hand cramps is to write with the pen held between the pointer and middle finger. I first saw this done by one of my uncles and was curious enough to try it. It can feel a bit weird at first, but my writing is just as legible and my hand doesn’t cramp up durig an esecially long note taking/journalling session.

10

Thanks for all the tips, everyone. I haven’t started my journal yet because I’m too busy with all kinds of other shit, but I already have a journal I plan to use (lined, but it was free, so I have to use it) and I hope to start carrying it around. I already do keep a notebook for my writing outlines and ideas, but I would like to keep that separate from my “personal” journal (I love compartmentalization), partially because I do show people my writing journal.

Mostly I just hope this will let me be more spontaneous. I’ve been too scrupulous about setting aside some times as “writing times” and then forcing myself to work on just one project, and while that systematic approach has worked in the past (really well) I’m getting blocked. I haven’t written anything in a month. So maybe this will break me out of the rut. Also it will get me away from the computer, which would be nice since every time I go on the computer I have to check my email and I keep getting flooded with that “other shit” I mentioned.

Me too! Which is why I used to vent to my Livejournal. But now too many people know me on there IRL, and I’ve even gotten queries as to “why did your journal say you updated and I can’t read it?” People are paranoid. I think I liked it better when I didn’t know anyone and could be as free as I wanted on LJ. My old LJ was stuffed with those late-night monologues that kept me up, several of which were actually somewhat well-written. Kind of wish I hadn’t deleted it.

11

I have what I guess would be a journal, but I don’t call it that. It’s just a nice hard-bound plain-paper notebook I got at a bookstore some years back. I put thoughts, quotes, rants, and things like that in there, as well as pictures I think are cool, stories I write, story ideas…it’s pretty free-form. If I held myself to keeping an actual physical journal, I think I’d freak out, too.

As for the LJ thing, I have two - my public LJ, which is where I put silly little daily happenings, quizzes, and stuff to share with my friends, and my private blog hosted on my own server that no one knows about to bitch about things I don’t want other people to see. I’m sure they could get past my password encryption, but the people who would bother aren’t people I care about anyway.

~Tasha