JOURNAL: HOW TO AND WHY

( If you're already convinced on why, you can skip to how below)

Let's start with why not: 1) it's time-consuming and requires a degree of

discipline. BUT it actually saves time as an extensive entry can be done

in twenty minutes or less. Who hasn't wasted hours on a single paper on

false starts and writing avoidance? And like any activity, the more you

write the easier it gets, and it becomes a natural part of your routine,

allowing you to rapidly get into the "zone" or writing mode. Failing that,

if you just carry it around you can always find chunks of time during the

day while you're waiting.

2) If it's a diary of my intimate thoughts it's dangerous (if someone

finds it) or useless (for anything other than venting). BUT while it's

true that simply listing the day's activities might not be useful in most

classes, in a popular culture class there may well be something you could

use. And anything that pisses you off is certainly worth writing about.

Moreover, if you have a "holy curiosity" that Einstein recommends, you

will be alive and conscious and notice stuff, not just be on zombie

autopilot like most people. Here's an illustrative example: some years

ago I was traveling in the Yucatan with a photographer. Now the great

advantage of traveling is that it breaks you out of zombie mode of the

everyday, but hanging out with a visual person also made me more visual;

for the first time I was hunting light and thinking about composition.

Towards the end of the trip she would even hand me the camera because she could

tell I was seeing something she wasn't. Similarly, you could use the

journal as a way of staying conscious. As for the confidentiality

problem, you could write in a sort of shorthand code.

3) "Been There." At some point we were all required to write in a

journal, and got different pens and pencils and wrote a bunch of entries

the night before it was due. BUT this, of course, is not a fair test,

since the whole point of the journal is to plant seeds which sprout into

ideas which can be further cultivated/developed in the journal. In the

early days of the scientific revolution, one group of scientists,

embryologists, made much faster progress than other groups because they

used a double entry journal technique: they'd put their data on the left

side of the page and then speculate and ask questions about it on the

right. This accelerated their thinking. You can use this simple yet

powerful technique as well.

All real writers keep some sort of journal, and it's not surprising when

you realize that it solves most if not all the problems that writers

encounter: finding a topic, coming up with an "angle" or position (someone

once said something like "How can I really know what I think until I see

what I've said?" that is, written), how to organize, how to generate

specific detail/support etc. Probably the best definition of a real

writer is someone who writes every day, but 15-20 minutes every other day

will still produce results.

How To

The basic technique of the journal is brainstorming lists and then picking

an item and freewriting, which allows you to shut off or at least outrun the critic/judge most of us

carry around in our heads and which stifles creativity. A variation of this

which is useful for quickly finding a focus or angle is looping; you just

freewrite for five minutes, then take a break and pick something good out

of that freewriting and write on that for another five minutes (do at

least four). If you're at all serious about improving your writing, you

should try out at least once or twice all the prewriting techniques in the

C section of the Hacker handbook, as well as the heuristic questions on

the How to Be Brilliant handout, as some may just work for you better than

others, but different situations call for different techniques as well

(For example let's say you like listing, but on this paper generating

content is not a problem; in fact you've got so much that you get

frustrated trying to make sense of it. In that case clustering could help

you organize that mass of data).

The best source for other techniques/ideas for journal writing is Ira

Progoff's At a Journal Workshop. (In the Science Library RC480.5.P7 summary).

Here are suggestions from there and elsewhere:

Make a list of wise people you admire, whether they are a historical

figure, a real person you've met, or a character from a novel; write that

person a letter, or write a dialogue about a problem.

Make lists of times you've been surprised, changed you mind about

something, or of puzzling stuff that you're curious about.

Make a list of stepping stones of your life, events that made you who you

are, perhaps involving choices--some yours, some made by others (What

are some paths you could have taken?)

Dream Journals: Another common way to use a journal for personal growth is recording and

musing about your dreams . (See Naomi Epel's Writers Dreaming for how novelists use dreams

and journals to use their subconscious right brain to solve problems. For example, Art

Spiegelman, the author of Maus, a haunting cartoon version of his family's experiences of the

Holocaust, actually poses problems for his brain to work on when he goes to sleep, since that's

what dreams are for. William Styron woke up with the vision of the main character for Sophie's

Choice while stuck on another book. Amy Tan got the courage to write when a friend of hers

who'd been murdered came to her in a dream and showed her how to fly on wings rented for a

quarter.

Here's some more ideas to play with:

Make a list of inventions you'd like to see or rules you'd like changed (or made).

Keep track of recurring words, clothes, ideas etc. Is there a pattern or trend emerging?

If you're interested in style, write down strings of words that catch your attention. Do imitations

and even improvements of these.

Write a dialogue with a current paper or project (It's weird, but it works).

You can also use the journal to discover what your life's work should be

(See Richard Bolles' classic What Color is Your Parachute?summary). First make a

list of jobs or projects (at school, work or a hobby) that you enjoyed and

are proud of. Pick five or so and list specifically what skills and

talents were involved. List some jobs/bosses that you hated and look for

common threads again. Now write a detailed description of your perfect job.

 There are other ideas on how to use a journal on the creativity page.

Journal techniques for personal discovery

More "out there" fun ideas for journals

back to handouts

  P. McKercher 1.12.04