Journaling Is a Good Habit For Creatives
Many writers keep a journal in one form or another. If you’re like me, you probably have several journals going at once. I don’t write in each of my journals every day; I write in them as needed.
I have a personal journal where I jot down observations about my life. I have a gratitude journal, where I write down three things that I’m grateful for each day. It takes less than five minutes to complete my daily gratitude journal, but when I look back at the things I’ve been grateful for (beautiful sunsets, a cup of coffee, a new cafe I liked) it reminds me to stay positive.
Keeping a Journal Specifically For Writing
I also have a writing journal, one specifically for the books I’m writing. Sometimes I write out bulleted character lists, sometimes I write down ideas for what I need to learn to tell my story, and sometimes I simply brainstorm ideas.
A Handwritten Or a Typed Journal?
Some writers get hung up on how they keep their journals. It doesn’t matter if you handwrite your journal or keep it as a digital file on your computer or your phone. You need to do what works best for you.
Although I’ve gone digital to a large degree, there are still times when I prefer to handwrite my journals in a spiral notebook. In Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg recommends getting notebooks with cartoon characters on the covers because it prevents you from taking yourself too seriously while you’re writing, which is a great idea, especially when you’re simply journaling and nothing should be taken too seriously.
Journaling the old-fashioned way, with pen and paper, can seem like a tedious chore to some, but, like Goldberg, I believe there’s a hand-to-heart connection in writing things out longhand. I won’t bore you with the details, but there are studies that say that we tend to absorb information better if we handwrite something as opposed to typing it. If you want to think deeply about what you’re journaling, then you might consider journaling with pen and paper.
Keeping a Journal Is a Stress-Free Way To Be Creative
One rule for your creativity journal is that no one should see your journal but you. Hide it away if you need to, but your creativity journal is your private space to explore and play. Keeping a creativity journal is one way to invite the muse to visit.
A creativity journal is a perfect place to brainstorm anything about your project. Ideas are born from ideas, and the more ideas you have the better. Don’t worry if an idea is good or bad. Don’t judge your ideas as you’re writing them down. If the idea pops into your brain, write it in your journal. You want a lot of ideas to work with.
What can you write about? Anything you want. You might journal about
- Ideas for characters (characters sketches or character questionnaires)
- Ideas for plot
- Ideas for setting
- Ideas for dialogue; conversations between characters
- You can work through scenes you’re having trouble with
- You can experiment with different points of view
- You can talk to your characters and see what they have to say. They might surprise you!
You might choose to write about topics outside your project to get your creative juices flowing. Here are 365 creative writing prompts from thinkwritten.
Use Images Or Mind Maps For Your Journal
Writers focus on the written word, but you can use images in your journal as well. You could draw mind maps where you write whatever you want to focus on in the center of the page and then jot down corresponding ideas. Here’s a good example of using a Mind Map to plot a novel from thinkwritten.
Here’s a good example of a visual journal from Your Visual Journal. The visual journal can easily be adapted for any creative pursuit.
You can also use a bullet journal for your creative journal. When I wrote The Duchess of Idaho, I used a bullet journal to organize my historical research into life on the Oregon Trail. Here’s an example of bullet journaling for writers from Writer’s Edit.
Even a mood board is a great way to gather ideas for a novel or any creative work in progress. Here are some ideas for a mood board for writers from Milanote.
Morning Pages Or Writing Practice
Julia Cameron refers to this type of journaling as morning pages, where you complete three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing every morning. Natalie Goldberg refers to it as writing practice, where you set a timer for ten minutes, fifteen minutes, or however long you want to write, and you keep your hand moving the entire time without stopping to think about what you’re writing.
This type of stream-of-consciousness writing can be beneficial, especially when you’re stuck and you need room to explore various thoughts, observations, or ideas. Writing for the sake of writing, getting the ideas out of your head and onto paper, is always worthwhile.
Filling Your Creative Well
As writers or any creatives, we need to fill our creative well so that we have food for our creative thoughts. Creatives cannot work in a vacuum. Your creative journal is a place to put your ideas together so that whenever you’re stumped or you need some inspiration, you have easy access to your sparks of inspiration.
Don’t Worry About the Results
The whole purpose of this type of journaling is to create a nonjudgment zone where we feel free to try out new ideas and play. Feel free to try anything, no matter how crazy it seems. As Natalie Goldberg says, feel free to write the worst junk in the world.
Journaling teaches us that it’s okay to create just for the sake of creating. Many of the ideas you try out in your journal won’t end up in your finished product. That’s okay. Your mind had to work its way through all the possibilities before settling on the one that works best.
Journaling For Creativity Is Time Well Spent
However you choose to keep a creative journal, you’ll find the time well spent. It’s important to exercise the creative part of our brains and to learn that we can let our ideas flow easily, no matter how crazy those ideas might seem. In fact, often the craziest ideas are the ones we needed to get our creative juices flowing.