The Poet’s Journal: Uses, Benefits, and Tips for Journal Writing

Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Carl Sandburg

Writing by Felipe Ferreira

As Sandburg suggests, poets are strange, dislocated creatures, longing for seeming impossibilities—to live outside physical boundaries, to take flight in language.

As “a sea animal living on land,” Sandburg understood how poetry could be a kind of journal of one’s creative life.

This notion of poetry as a journal of the poet’s life reminds me of my own journal and how journaling is a crucial writing practice that strengthens and enhances my poetry and my creative process.

The Benefits of Journaling

Journal writing is a voyage to the interior. Christina Baldwin

Writing out one’s thoughts in a free-associative way is the hallmark of journal writing.

There is no right or wrong way to journal, making it an excellent writing practice through which to experiment and play with language and meaning. And the content of your journal can consist of anything, which provides a free-style forum for your thoughts and observations. Your journal might consist of notes and drafts of poems, to-do lists, your favorite quotes, or an overheard conversation.

Most significantly, journal writing is a way to go inside your own creative mind.

It’s a way to explore your creative recesses, to shine light on the dark corners of your experiences, to give voice to what remains unspoken, and to scratch out meaning for your work and your life.

Uses for Your Journal

I write journals and would recommend journal writing to anyone who wishes to pursue a writing career. You learn a lot. You also remember a lot… and memory is important. Judy Collins

I highly recommend journal writing to everyone. Like Collins, I believe it’s especially useful for poets and other artists. Not only does journaling provide a way to remember the events, people, thoughts, emotions, circumstances, and interactions of your life, but it can also serve many other beneficial uses.

To give you some ideas about the possible uses for your journal, here are a few ways in which I use mine:

• To establish a daily writing practice. At minimum, I write 3-4 long-hand pages in my journal every morning, and often I write in it throughout the day and into my evening. If I didn’t write daily in my journal, there would be long periods of time when I didn’t write at all, and this daily practice of writing has been crucial not only to my creative productivity but to my personal mental health. More significantly, by writing in my journal daily, I’m able to flex my writing skills on a regular basis and to hone them and keep them in shape.

• To write poetry. The free-association of journal writing often jogs my memory and opens my mind to new possibilities for how to express experience through language. Through this creative process, I tend to begin my poems in my journal, scratching out those first, tenuous lines, and my journal is often where I end my poems, when seemingly out of nowhere I know exactly how that final line should read. As such, my journal is where I tend to draft all my poems.

• To conceptualize creative ideas. When ideas for poems, stories, and articles come to me, writing in my journal becomes an excellent way to take notes, bounce around ideas, draw out mental connections, and play around with words and images. In fact, right now I’m using notes from my journal to write this article.

• To conceptualize, organize and track creative projects. I often conceptualize larger creative projects in my journal. For instance, the beginnings of poetryNprogress began as a series of journal entries in which I dreamed and schemed about how to make it a reality. Also, I tend to organize my projects in my journal, creating to-do lists and mapping out schedules and deadlines. Finally, I use my journal to track and periodically review and evaluate my progress on my projects.

• To process my thoughts and feelings. My journal provides a private and safe place where I can examine my innermost thoughts and feelings. As artists, we’re sensitive people, and if you’re anything like me, then you might find that your creative brain is often a jumbled chaos of emotions and ideas. By writing out my thoughts and emotions, I’m able to process them, make sense of them, and gain some clarity. Most significantly, this processing doesn’t have to take any particular form. It doesn’t have to be a poem or story; it can be exactly what it is—my thoughts and emotions on the page.

• To record and to reflect on my daily life. I often write in my journal about what I’m doing, where I’m going, and who I’m interacting with. I write out conversations, observations, and the details of my experiences. It’s the details that comprise our lives, and it’s often through these details that I come to understand patterns of meanings and emotions in my life and in my poetry. Keeping a record of your life is a great way to remember who you were and what you were doing in the past. But it’s also a useful way to figure out who you are now and the ebb and flow of your present life.

• To study. When I’m reading poetry collections or other books, I often take notes on my impressions and the new ideas that appear there. I might write about what seems unique about a particular poem or its technique or form. Or I might grapple with an idea I disagree with. Regardless, my journal is a place where I can process the knowledge I’m reading and learning about in my work and in my life.

These are just a few examples of how useful a journal can be. The list goes on and on, and depending on your craft or career, it can serve a broad range of uses.

4 Tips for Keeping a Journal

After the writer’s death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter. Jean Cocteau

If you don’t already journal, then keeping one is really simple. Here are some tips to get you started:

1. Decide on your tools: Because I go through so many journals, I prefer a spiral bound notebook and an old-fashioned ink pen. But if you’re first starting out, then I recommend buying a special journal and some special pens because they’re so delightfully tempting to use. Many people enjoy the Moleskine journals because famous artists such as Van Gogh, Picasso, and Hemingway used them to jot down their ideas. If you’re not into writing long-hand, then there are free word-processing programs you can use. Check out Google Docs and Writer from Open Office Suite.
2. Set aside uninterrupted time on a regular basis: Make a date with your journal, preferably on the same days or same times, and spend as much or as little uninterrupted time as you prefer. I recommend writing for at least 10-15 minutes every day in your journal. With a little diligence, you may be surprised by how beneficial this habit can be.
3. Let yourself write anything without any judgment. Let yourself free-write or simply reflect. Write anything and everything, but do your best not to judge your writing. Interestingly, professional writers probably have the hardest time with simply writing for the sake of writing. Too often we get caught up in trying to craft our writing, rather than simply letting inane, boring, or trite ideas work their way out of our systems and flow into more interesting and even brilliant writing.
4. Take it with you. I take my journal almost everywhere, which is why having a portable notebook is so handy. When I’m on tour and laid over in an airport, when I’m waiting in the doctor’s office, or when I’m lounging at the coffee shop, I’m usually writing in my journal. Not only does this habit keep me from getting bored, but it means I can record my thoughts, observations, and emotions as they’re happening, rather than having to wait until later when I might forget.

Resources for Journal Writing

I am enamoured of my journal. Sir Walter Scott

One great resource for journal writing is Dawn Herring’s site, which features lots of articles and prompts. For journal enthusiasts, Journal For You provides articles, submissions, and links. Mari L. McCarthy’s interesting site CreateWriteNow.com offers ways to utilize journaling as therapy. And if you want to participate in a weekly Twitter chat about journal writing, then check out the Journal Chat Twitter page for details.

Some sites where you can keep an online journal are LiveJournal.com, my-diary.org, and Penzu.com.

But a quick internet search will provide you with everything you ever wanted to know about journal writing and then some.

Journaling as Playful Work

I fall back on this journal just as some other poor devil takes to drink. Anonymous

Getting into the habit of journaling daily has meant that much of my “work” happens in my journal, which makes work more pleasurable and makes it feel more like playing than some engagement in a disciplined and regimented routine.

I’m diligent in my work and in my poetry on a daily basis because I love writing in my journal.

And in many ways, I’ve come to rely on that habit. If, for some odd reason, a day goes by without writing in my journal, my whole day feels off and out of whack.

So, if you don’t already keep a journal, then consider starting one. Or if you do keep a journal, then consider how you might utilize it more fully and more often to enhance your creative process.

By journaling on a regular basis, you might just fall into a seriously fun habit.

What can be found in your journal?

Flickr photo courtesy of Felipe Ferreira (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)