Keeping a Writing Journal
Who Puts the Bins Out?
As you’ll know if you’re familiar with my newsletter, I do not keep a diary. I sometimes wish I did. I envy people who have been keeping diaries for ever. I sometimes start a diary but I can never keep it up. I once kept my own, solitary version, of a renga diary (really renga is about a dialogue between two or more people) for several months, a record for me. The trouble is, I am someone who if you give me a pen and uncensored time with my thoughts my demons will out. Allowing what I’m thinking or feeling to spill onto the page sooner or later compounds my lack of confidence and self-belief. I end up rummaging around in the basement of my childhood, turning over my anxieties and hang-ups, the voice of my mother at my ear. Rarely do I discover anything that might be considered a long-hidden treasure, more often I come up with a black bin bag full of junk and rubbish that never quite made it to the bins! On that note? Who puts the bins out in your house? John does it here. We joke about it being men’s work. Maybe I should start taking out the rubbish. I don’t think he would argue.
Bins aside, I am also not a writer who sits down to the page every day. I do not have, or even like, rituals and routines. It is perhaps surprising then that for nearly five years I have kept a large notebook entitled, My Writing Journal. I started it in December 2018 and it’s getting close to full. There are gaps, sometimes of several months or more, but I always come back to it. In my Writing Journal I write about my writing. How meta can you get?
Why you might ask, when I write so many words: novels, stories, poems, Substack essays, would I want to write more? How come I keep it up, when other journaling falls by the wayside? Truth be told I’m still trying to work out why that is.
Why have I persisted and why do I thoroughly recommend the keeping of such a journal for any creative enterprise?
Looking back, I see that beginning the journal was an act of self-mentoring. On the very first page under the heading of, Self-Mentoring ( I’m not sure if that was my concept or I nicked it) I list my writing tasks and my goals, always stressing the enjoyment. I outline my intentions, where I hope to find my inspiration, what I’m reading, my TBR pile, what I’m watching, doing etc.
Those first pages set a tenor that continues throughout the notebook, one of me talking to myself about what’s happening in my writing life, both currently and the possibilities for the future. As you might imagine there are lots of lists. You can read more about why I love lists here.
My journal orchestrates and programmes my writing world. It also gives me the opportunity to talk about that world. If you are a writer you will know that there are only limited opportunities to do this. Only with another writer or a writing buddy can you engage so much in the detail. You cannot do this with friends however interested and supportive, else you risk boring them. You have to fall in love with writing to keep doing it, and the lovesick do not always make interesting companions. You cannot and should not bore your friends but you will never bore yourself. My Writing Journal is a detailed love-letter to my passion, and an antidote to the solitariness of being a writer. Note, I do not say loneliness. I never feel lonely when I’m writing.
Although not necessarily intended as such, the journal forms a record of all the writing, the writing associated events and the people I’ve worked with or got to know, in the past five years. Only now, when I read it back to myself, do I realise what I’ve achieved, and just how many projects, ideas, workshops, events etc I’ve been involved in.
Events, workshops, projects etc are all part of the writing life and they can offer a great way of recording your pathway in writing or in any other creative field. We may not all be destined to be published writers but that has no bearing on whether we are writers or not. There is a very rich writing life, arguably with less angst and pain attached to being an unpublished writer and forging our own path. It is what I decided on before I was lucky enough to be taken up by Linen Press. Of course, it is because of Linen Press that I am fortunate enough to also chart in my journal the progress of my publications, Going In With Flowers, This One Wild Place and now, The Silent Women.
The journal acts as a briefing space, I first mooted the notion of a Substack newsletter in its pages. It is also the place where I console and support myself, eg: ‘the thing to do, as always,’ I tell myself, ‘ is to write on regardless,’ ‘when it’s too hard to write you have to be kind to yourself, Avril.’
I write about important things I’ve learned or been inspired by. I record my rejections and my successes and I celebrate what I do. At the back I have a pocket where I keep all the lovely emails people send me unsolicited about my work. I also write down the positive things people say as I know how easily they can get dismissed. And here, I would pause and just say, as a reader, never feel shy about emailing a writer to tell her how much you’ve enjoyed her work. It is such a priceless gift.
The journal records my life hurdles, the death of my father, my partner’s illness, things which often account for gaps in the journalling, but I write about them only in passing. I do not dwell on them. And I don’t beat myself up (which I’ve been very prone to doing in the past) about what hasn’t been achieved.
I reference and sometimes copy up helpful ideas/tips, articles, thoughts etc. I write about my novel’s progress reflecting on its structure, characters, pace and all that comprises the nitty-gritty of the novelist’s craft. It is part of my attempt to always write the best book I can.
I record good, happy times in my writing world and looking through I see that more than anything, more than even the record it provides, the journal is a celebration of my writing life. As such it’s very precious. I learned this a while back when I couldn’t find it and panicked thinking I left it behind in a workshop I’d run that week. Fortunately it was here in my study all along, hiding under a pile of books. Phew!
I’ve no idea what made me begin my Writing Journal, perhaps it coincided with having fewer opportunities to talk about writing with my writing buddy. Perhaps I felt particularly unsure of the future and needed a guide. I don’t know what my expectations were. Knowing myself as a failed diarist I probably thought it would fizzle out at some point. I don’t know when it started to become so valuable or compelling but it did and I am eternally grateful to have it.
Perhaps in reading this you will feel inspired to keep a similar kind of journal for whatever purpose. I hope so…and if you do, good luck!
Thanks for reading
Avril x