Purposely Write in a Journal: Nonfiction Writing Prompt #35

For years I kept a journal. I wrote in it religiously. In fact, I still have many of those journals on a shelf in the closet of my office.

I would sit down in the morning and, as part of my morning routine, after exercise and meditation, I’d write in my journal. I also tried doing this as Julia Cameron’s (The Artist’s Way) Morning Pages exercise. For a long time, I journaled by hand. Later, I used the computer and typed Word docs that I stored in a folder.

Some years ago, however, I gave up this practice almost entirely. I now only use it occasionally when I meditate and want to record the messages I get during meditation. Let me tell you why.

Although journaling provides a wonderful way to “warm up” your writing muscles and to rid your mind of the clutter that can stop you from focusing on your “real” writing work for the day, it also can serve as a distraction from that real work. I find many of my clients end up spending an hour or so each day journaling, and then they complain they don’t have time to work on their books. That means they use their journals to procrastinate! Or they spend too much time journaling.

That doesn’t necessarily make journaling bad, but this activity can be used in a more effective manner.

For those of you who enjoy journaling or who would like to try journaling but who are short on time and would like to become more productive, I’d like to suggest you try an approach I call “purposeful journaling.” Don’t just explore your feelings or thoughts or allow your pen to peruse your stream of consciousness. (Save this activity for after work time if you really miss this type of journaling, or only allow yourself to do so for 15 minutes before you begin your writing project!) Instead, choose to use your journal to explore a topic that moves you further toward some goal.

For example, if you write about technology, you could journal (on the computer or by hand) about your experience with a new app and use that entry later as part of a blog post or an example in your how-to book. If you are writing a memoir, you could write about an experience you had or an event that happened during the time period encompassed by your memoir and later polish this up to include in your manuscript. If you write articles, you could write about a personal experience related to the topic of your latest piece, and then use that as a lead.

Consider each journal entry like a prompt related to your current or future writing project. When you do this, you may find yourself getting so involved that you make huge leaps in productivity, actually writing a whole blog post, composing a whole section or chapter in your book, or completing a personal essay or article.

You can actually journal a whole book. Read this post to learn how.