My journaling experience

My stats show that many people come to this web journal to read the post entitled My journal. Week after week this post is read over and over. I do wonder sometimes if an academic teaching some sort of writing course sends his or her students here. I can't think of another plausible reason why so many people read that particular post. I speculate that he or she wants to show his students the dangers of online writing, or the possibilities. The simple truth is that everything in this world can be used for writing and story fodder. I was told an anecdote by a woman yesterday as to how she knew that her husband was having an affair. I am sorry to say that my mind immediately said, 'Wow, what a great plot point!' It's what writers do, mine everyone and everything.

Since so many people do come to this web journal to read about journal writing, for whatever reason, I thought it might be time that I said something about journals. First of all, I adore them. I have kept them now for several years and it is a wonderful way of 'dropping' thoughts onto the page. It is said that an idea may come to you and if you don't write it down you may never have it again. Of course, anyone who reads here more than once or twice will have picked up on the fact that I am attuned to reasons to be fearful or anxious. You're not exactly a brain surgeon if you figured this out. So, fearful that this was true, I wrote lots of stuff down. I still do. Once or twice a week I brain dump into a closed web journal and one day I'll delete it because I don't want it read, ever.

Having said how much I love journals, I want to say this, that journals of all and any kind can be the writer's trap. When I first heard Colin Toibin say this, I didn't want to believe it. However, over the past few weeks I have come to see that what I was taught in my writer's course probably doesn't hold water. You don't have to keep journals to be a writer at all.

If you wake up with an idea, or go walking and see something that captures your interest, if you can't do anything else almost immediately than write a note, well then, for goodness sake write the note. But, recognize that it's less than a 50:50 chance that you'll ever refer to it again. Chances are high that by the time you go to use the idea, you won't find it anyway. I must have at least a dozen journals from the past few years and to try to find a single idea written some years ago is not likely. If I do read something over I often notice that the idea has changed; has morphed into another idea; changed as I changed. (Note: This is all debateable, of course. Woody Allan keeps scraps of paper in a drawer by his bed and when he is looking for a project he refers to the scraps of paper until he finds one that continues to resonate.)

Toibin believes that if you have to write a note for fear of forgetting the idea that means that you haven't taken it into your being. One way of taking a single idea into your being is to write a paragraph about the idea, perhaps the opening of a short story. Then file it in your Short Story file and return to it as the idea grows. Of course, I'm still not good at this. It's a very new idea for me. But, it has already released me from this awful notion that I will most likely forget my ideas. As you write into your story that's when you can mine what is in your head. If you have thought about it enough as you go about peeling the vegetables or ironing a shirt, the thoughts can be transferred directly from your head onto the page.

Ideas mull about in the head and need to be put down on the page eventually,  probably in the form of a scene or some dialogue or description. The exception might be, and I still do this: My philosophy of life = _____. This helps because it feels to me that at the core of a story is one's version of the meaning of life, in some form or other. So long as you have that embedded in your brain such that you can express it in a few words, you're good to go in creating scenes and characters, even if they are nothing like you.

To get better, I think one needs to write almost every day. It's not as simple as that but not much can be achieved without that starting point. I've been agitated lately at all the calls on my attention and my difficulty at getting to sit down with myself and write, until I remembered something. When I had no choice but to generate material constantly as a student, I put that first. I didn't go into stores except supermarkets hardly at all and I rushed through my household, wifely and motherly tasks so that I could devote my efforts to the blank screen. Of course, that's an unbalanced view and people count. They come first, at least for me. Yet, without some devotion to a craft - writing, painting, editing, acting, getting the tennis ball to the far back corner - how does anyone become proficient?

I offer one major exception to this advice of minimizing the practice of journal writing. There is a journal entitled '365'. Now, here's a quick way to a writerly life. Don't use this to rant but rather to sit with yourself daily and conjure your most compelling emotion. Ask: What am I feeling right now?' Then, do something with it. Give that emotion to a character on your mind. Perhaps a little dialogue, or a description of the character's internal world. There. Endless ideas all in one little journal that will ward off writer's block forever. Good luck with it, whatever your style of transferring ideas into prose of some form. No-one said it was easy.