On Keeping A Journal

When I was in high school, an English teacher of mine gave us an assignment to keep a journal. The assigment was to be a final exam for the end of the semester, and there were some basic requirements for the journal to pass the final. We were encouraged to go outside the realm of the requirements and make our journals unique to us. The goal of the assignment was obvious. She was trying to inspire us to let out the creative writer in all of us. The assigment was given to us as a handout which we were instructed to place as the first page of our journals. It read:

Start a Journal

As a beginning writer, start your own daily journal. A journal is a notebook in which a writer makes daily entries about anything that comes to mind. It is, in effect, a way to practice the art of writing, and it's a storehouse for ideas about which to write later.

In a journal writers record what they see or think, unlike a diary, in which writers are normally concerned only with what they do. The habit of journal-keeping provides benefits for writers by sharpening their sense of observation, by increasing their curiousity, by loosening their powers of creativity. Every day life gives us countless experiences, and yet we respond to only a minute fraction of them. The great writer Henry James once advised: "Try to be one of those on whom nothing is every lost." Those who follow this advice stand a better chance of responding to life's experiences than others.

Many writers take up pen and paper so seldom that they have no endurance. They are mentally exhausted before they read the end of the first page. Do not think, however, that all journal entries are long; they vary in length from just a few sentences to several pages.

But what, you may ask, do journal-keepers write about? What do they actually put into their journals? They may write their opinions about something they have heard. They may write a few paragraphs describing a fire or a beautiful sunset or a snowstorm or an auto race. They may want to tell a story. They may write a poem or a prayer. Possibly, they may want to talk over a problem with themselves. They may be wild with happiness or gloomy with despair and try to reflect their feelings in their writing.

Journal entries are not formal compositions. They may have words or sentences scratched out. They may even have minor errors in grammar or spelling. Appearnce and accuracy are of little concern to journal-keepers as they make daily entries. Of primary importance, though, is that they put something in their journals every day. Journal-keepers know that if they should ever want to develop their daily entries into a formal composition or short story, they will be able to correct errors at that time.

Usually, journal-keepers write the date at the top of a fresh page in their notebooks and then write whatever comes into their minds. Daily entries do not have to be related to one another. The type of notebook you decide to use in keeping your journal is a matter of personal preference. Consider the words of the great American journal-keeper Henry David Thoreau:

"My journal is that of me which would else spill over and run to waste, gleanings from the field which in action I reap.
... It is wise to write on many subjects, to try many themes, that you may find the right and inspiring one. Be greedy of occassions to express your thought.
... Probe the universe in a myriad points. Be avaricious of these impulses. You must try a thousand themes before you find the right one, as nature makes a thousand acorns to get one oak."

I am reminded why I do this at all. I was inspired once by the example of Derek Powazek to create an online journal, but I had forgotten the purpose of keeping one. Recovering this memory is almost a chastisement for my carelessness in letting my ideas and thoughts "run to waste". Ever forward.