For me, journaling serves two purposes. First of all, I started keeping a journal as a way to get my deepest emotions out onto the page. This journal, along with music has helped me to overcome the pain of emotional and verbal abuse.
The second reason I journal is for brainstorming and dumping scenes when I revise my fiction. I don’t know if people would advise putting my feelings and my writing ideas and scenes in one Word document, but this is the way I do it. As for my favorite journaling book? As I’ve stated before, I use a Microsoft Word document which grows a little every day.
I have attempted to journal three times before, but these attempts never worked, because I was under the impression that I had to write in my journal every day and each entry had to have a date inserted at the beginning. As I started journaling about six months ago, I discovered that dating each entry was stressful to me. I always felt guilty, because I didn’t have anything to write on a given day. Therefore, I decided to make my entries more flexible. I have a section for negative feelings, one for positive thoughts, several brainstorming sections, sections I call scene dumps for each work in progress and so on.
When it comes to journaling, my advice to you is to find a system that works for you. Make sure you have a stress-free journaling experience, so that your journal will last for as long as you have something to write. Most of all, have fun with it!
Now enough about my journaling experience. Here are two links that I think you’ll find both helpful and enjoyable. One is an introduction to journaling, which features a writing prompt. The other one is a winter poem that the author wrote as a journaling example. Enjoy these posts and have a blessed Sunday afternoon.