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While I was in Chicago for BlogHer this summer, I shared a hotel room with the amazing Jen Lee, one of the most beautiful writers I know in real life. As soon as we'd checked into our hotel, we wandered to a nearby grill for some much-needed lunch, and our conversation turned to journaling.
"You'd think that for as long as I've been blogging," I was saying, "I'd be a pretty avid journaller. But I'm actually pretty horrifying at it. I think it just makes me feel really ridiculous -- like I'm just sitting there talking to myself. And then, sometimes I write something, and I don't like how it turned out; or I try to create 'art,' and it's just frightening, so I rip the page out, and then I have a journal with a ripped page, and that looks like crap, so then I just discard the book altogether."
She blinked.
"Okay," she said, looking at me like I'd grown a second head, "I think maybe you're just too hung up on the process. I don't think journals are supposed to be that perfect."
"Yeah?" I asked. "How do you do it?"
"Well," she began, "I try to write at least three pages every morning."
"Like in The Artist's Way?" I interrupted.
"Yes," she said, "I just write, totally stream-of-consciousness, for 3 straight pages. I find that this helps centres me for the day, and I don't let myself turn on my computer for the day until I've written these three pages. It keeps my email inbox from prioritizing my day, you know? So I write. And sometimes it's deep thoughts, and sometimes it's just a list of what I need to do, or pick up at the market."
"Oh really?" I said, paying close attention. "So your journal isn't just your innermost thoughts and dreams?"
"Well, sometimes it is," she admitted. "and sometimes it's the start of a story idea. But I carry my journal with me, and add things to it all day long. Sometimes it's a phone number of a new friend or dry cleaner. Or someone's mailing address. I basically just write everything down in my journal. If I'm required to handwrite something, it goes in my journal."
"So it sounds like it's just a hodgepodge of stuff -- no real rhyme or organization."
"Other than date, no," Jen admitted. "The cool thing is that I can always find that phone number or figure out when I dropped off the dry cleaning, because I just have to flip through the pages to the right date."
I love this idea. I think the reason journaling hasn't worked for me in the past has to do with structure. But if I just look at my journal as a place to record my life -- my messy, disorganized life, with its half-thoughts, and to-do lists and scrawled messages and the occasional fortune-cookie fortune or found photograph -- the end result pretty much accomplishes the recording, chronicling purpose, doesn't it?
Since that lunch, I've completed 2 full moleskines full of my messy life. To make it interesting, I often watercolour the pages prior to filling them with my thoughts, scraps and other ephemera. I feel more centered as a result, and far more productive. I fill it with writing ideas -- blog posts, book chapters -- while I'm sitting in the carpool line waiting for my daughter, waiting for her at gymnastics, or just sitting having a chai tea latte at my favourite coffeehouse. It's seriously changed my life.
Do you art journal? If you don't, and would like to give it a try, here's some inspiration:
The lovely Lucrecer Braxton has recently been giving us peeks inside her old journals that are just breathtaking.
Art Junk Girl also shows us the inside of her journals -- less words, more art, all beautiful.
If you're just getting started, since that lunch, Jen Lee has started her own line of journals that gently ease you into the journaling process. They might be just the nudge you need.
And finally, here's how I've combined my journaling with goalsetting -- so far, so good.
If you already journal, have any tips you'd like to share?
Karen is a writer and a photographer in Houston, Texas. You can read and see more of her work at Chookooloonks.
