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You should see my journal. It’s a cacophony of words and images, scribbles, doodles, and scraps of ideas tucked between the pages. It’s sort of a mess, and I like it that way.
I know some writers are diligent about keeping their journals pristine. The pages are crisp, the lines straight and legible, and every word is thoughtfully selected. The theme is consistent — a dream journal, an idea journal, a diary. It’s an orderly affair done up in a tidy fashion. And that works for some people.
But it doesn’t work for me.
If I’m going to be creative — if I’m going to let my creativity flow — then I need to let things get messy. I need to dig my toes in the mud, bury my fingers in the clay, and splash paint across the walls. I can’t be confined by order or logic. I need to write sideways and upside down. I need to doodle. Jot down song lyrics. Make smudges. I need to be free.
And I’m not the only one.
Keri Smith created Wreck This Journal with the same understanding that when we allow ourselves freedom to make a mess, we also free ourselves to be as creative as possible, unchaining hidden ideas that refuse to come out for fear that they’ll be destroyed by our linear and conventional thinking:
By forcing ourselves to wreck it on purpose, the “journal as an object” loses its preciousness, and allows us the feeling of completion.
Wreck This Journal is a great way to get your creativity out of the box. As you work your way through the journal, you actually wreck it. You’ll cut, tear, and generally thrash this book (you’ll even be asked to tie it to a string and drag it around on the ground). You start letting go of constraints, allowing yourself to make mistakes, create poorly crafted prose, or senseless art (because you’re going to wreck it), and this gives your creativity the courage it needs to take risks.
25 Ways to Journal
I’m not going to ask you to wreck your journal, but if you think it might open your creative floodgates, I say go for it. When we want to be more creative, we have to be willing to try anything. What I am going to do is give you a list of ways that you can use your journal. You’ll find that if you open your journal to more possibilities for material, media, and subject matter, you’ll start to build interesting connections. And that is one sure path to better writing!
Since Writing Forward’s inception, many readers have left comments sharing brilliant ways that they use their journals. Here are some of the ideas they’ve shared mixed in with some of my own:
- Forget about lines. Turn your journal sideways or upside down. Write in the margins or on the spine. Write in a spiral. Draw a shape and fill it with words. This was one of the first creativity techniques I ever used and it really got the ball rolling.
- Ever come across mind-blowing imagery in a magazine or online? Print it out, cut it out, and paste in in your journal for inspiration.
- Write with colored pens, crayons, or Sharpies.
- Copy passages from your favorite books into your journal, or jot down your thoughts, questions, and reactions to whatever you’re currently reading.
- Write down words. Not sentences — just words — words you like, words that evoke intense emotions or strong imagery or words that simply resonate. Randomly fill the blank spaces in your journal with these words. Write them big, write them small, and write them in all different colors!
- Make lists of names and places (make up some place names!). List foods, song titles, and sensations. List nouns or list adjectives. Or simply list random, short thoughts that pop into your head.
- Doodle, doodle, doodle, and draw. Or try writing and sketching in your journal with chalk or charcoal. See what happens when you smudge and smear your words. Maybe you’ll make some pictures or abstract art!
- Use stream of consciousness, also known as freewriting.
- Dreams are a popular source of inspiration, and ideal for journal writing. You can get story ideas, imagery, and bizarre notions from your night visions. Write down your most interesting dreams in your journals.
- Use journal writing to engage in dialogue with people who are inaccessible. Write letters or short notes to people you’ve lost touch with, people you’ve broken up with, and people who have passed away. Chat with your characters. Converse with your heroes (dead or alive).
- Invest in happiness. Use your journaling time to focus on positive, happy thoughts, ideas, and experiences, or keep a gratitude journal, logging the things you’re grateful for.
- Stuff your journal with memorabilia like ticket stubs and gum wrappers. Write about these items and where they came from, or invent fictional stories about their origins.
All-Purpose Journal Writers
Treasure your journals! Let them them get wrecked up and messed up. Fill them up with your thoughts, ideas, and imaginings.
And keep writing.
Do you have any fun, unusual, messy, or liberating journal writing tips to share? Interested in trying any of the ones listed here? Share your thoughts and ideas by leaving a comment.
Journal Writing Resources:
I always hesitate to have a journal. What if someone finds it? How can I be honest and loose in it if I’m constantly thinking that it will get into the wrong hands? How do others handle this?
There are a few things you can do, Erika. First, you can write in code. If you just want to keep track of your life events so you remember them, then be vague, use secret code words so that another person won’t be able to figure out the details. An alternative would be to use a password-protected document on your computer.
However, the ideas presented here are for a general writing journal rather than for a diary-style journal. This would be a place to be creative, not necessarily to make a record of your life (although that may be included).
Good luck!
I love my journal when it is wrecked. I use Moleskines now pretty much exclusively and it is a good thing, because the elastic strap around them holds them together. My pages are wrinkled and filled with different colored inks, notes in all directions, arrows pointing here and there and so on. And the back pocket bulges with scraps of paper and things I might want to write more about some day.
This is a great post with all kinds of great new ideas to try.
I recently got my first Moleskine, but I haven’t started using it yet. I’m waiting until I finish my current journal. I do like the looks of it, and I’m looking forward to trying it out (especially since so many writers rave about it!). The more messy and wrecked a journal becomes, the easier it is to create freely! I often find the first page of a new journal both exciting and intimidating. But as I fill it up (mostly with scribbles and scrawls), it becomes more lived-in and comfortable.
I love this, my sketchbooks are mostly the same. I think that having a notebook to cull together all of those little bits of inspiration are what keep me sane. Great post – keep up the writing!
My notebooks and journal are pretty messy too. I jot all kinds of things down, and I doodle, make outlines, lists, character sketches. I find that this approach gets my creativity flowing.
I’ve kept a journal for over 20 years and I love it! I’m somewhere between messy and neat. I try not to have loose pages but writing in moleskines solves that problem with the back pocket. Great post!
I left a little something on my blog for you a little while back and forgot to mention it for you to see.
I’m looking forward to using my Moleskine, especially because it has that back pocket, which I think will be extremely useful. Do you have a link to the little something on your blog?
Thanks for the mention Melissa! This is definately up my ally. I have currently have about four running journals. My favourite is huge, made of recycled paper with a thick leather wrap. I’ve stuffed it which inspiring and beautiful images, textiles, fits and starts of stories, love letters (from my husband and from me to myself!) interesting articles, a few print outs of your posts :), etcetera etc.
I’ve thought about using a large sketchbook (11″ x 14″) for journaling because it would handle art and collage so much better than the smaller journals that I use. I think the ideal would be something with removable pages (kind of like a three-ring binder), but I haven’t found the right solution yet.
Yeah, I find I tend to bring “stuff” to that big journal, rather than write IN it. So it’s more of a messy, pretty filing system.
I like the way you cut loose on journaling and pumped up the volume.
My mental model of journaling used to be pretty constrained … almost a “dear diary” sort of view with blah, blah, blah. One day, one of my mentors explained the all-over-the-board approach and combination of visuals and notes Da Vinci style and it reminded me that heck, make the journal be whatever you want it to be, so it works for you.
You echoes that crucial concept here very well.
Yep, I used to do the diary thing too, and then I slowly started using my journal for all kinds of other stuff. This was back when I was a teenager. Eventually the diary entries stopped completely and gave way to poetry. Oddly, the poetry from my twenties actually functions sort of like a diary because those poems document what was going on in my life. Anyway, the older I get, the less interested I am in recording my life events and the more interested I become in sharing ideas and making stuff up.
Thanks for opening my eyes to this wonderful journal…I just ordered one.
That’s great. Let us know how you like it!
I sometimes forget that I am regularly journaling as often as I do. Between my moleskine, random tiny notebooks, post-its and now even my phone… although I’m not interested in wrecking my phone anytime soon.
I think one way I believe I’m wrecking a journal is not writing in it sequentially. I might start on page one, but I may skip a few pages with a brand new thought or start again with the last page or somewhere randomly in the middle. I do this specifically not to interfere with whatever thought(s) I started with earlier in case I want to expand it later. This proved very helpful. I’ve also written in code to with the thought my journals might be found. Sometimes I think it would be interesting what people think if they ever found them.
I have tried that technique — writing on whatever page or trying to leave space so I can come back and elaborate on something I started. In particular, I’ve tried this with the notebook I use for work. And I found it just doesn’t work for me. I don’t know why, because it makes sense, logically. I like to fill up page by page, otherwise I get totally lost when I go back to look for something.
I have the hardest time being messy in my journal. (Other than the handwriting, which I can’t help.) I’ve never been much of a doodler, and I like things to be tidy, so I can’t quite bring myself to go crazy. I do use different colors, though, and love to copy passages and quote in there for future reference.
Maybe Wreck this Journal would work for you! Actually, I don’t think it’s for everyone. I was always an overly organized, tidy person and in recent years I’ve been sort of letting that go. First, because I got so busy that I just didn’t have enough time to stay on top of all the tidiness. But there was a part of me that wanted to experience being a little messier because artists just rant and rave about the creative disorder. I think I’m happiest somewhere in the middle. I still like organization so I can find stuff, but I’m not as overboard as I once was and it’s a comfortable middle ground for me. My journal is the same way. I don’t have pages poking out and falling all over the place, but if I open it and flip through, it looks like someone’s imagination exploded all over the pages. And it did 😉
I think my problem is that “messy”–no matter how creative–just looks to much like “clutter.” I things to be clean and neat–I don’t even like wearing patterns, preferring solid colors, because I like the simple look. A journal written in clumps and circles and all willy-nilly might be freeing but there’s a part of me I’m quite sure it would drive crazy! (grin)
Well, being messy definitely isn’t for everyone. I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever get tired of my cluttered journal and return to a more organized style. Only time will tell.
I’m not compelled to be neat and tidy from the standpoint of neatnik but I keep hearing old tapes to clean up my penmanship. Some tapes die hard.
I think we’re all in the same boat. The computer is wonderful but it’s not doing penmanship any favors!
Hey Melissa, nice post. I’ve followed my wife’s lead and started keeping a glue stick handy. When I have some interesting bit of paper ephemera (ticket stubs in Thai, brochure pictures, etc), I cut it out and paste it in. Adds a nice visual aspect to everything.
Thanks, Seth. I keep a glue stick handy too, but I haven’t used it in a while. It looks like I’m going to have to plan a few hours to glue my random notes and ideas into my journal. It definitely adds a nice (inspirational) aspect to my journal.
I’ve never been someone who keeps a journal/book next to my bed in case I wake up at night. I still have roughly 18 different books that are half-filled with utter crap. I don’t write without purpose anymore, and maybe that’s been my problem over the past few months. Hm.
Maybe I should take the idea of “Wreck This Journal” and apply it to my website. Hm.
I find that writing without purpose allows me to purge my brain of all the crap and get to the good (best) stuff. You’re an extremely talented writer, Matthew. Sometimes I worry that you’re too demanding of yourself. You’ve got it, so just let it flow.
Melissa, I love this post! I’ve been journaling since I was 14, and rarely are two of my journals alike. Some are written as books of letters-never-sent. Others have day to day thoughts, along with more mundane items like doctors’ phone numbers and appointments with the lawyer. The reality is that journals are books of memories, and if I want to look back on what my life was like at a certain period, that trip to the doctor adds just as much insight as my feelings do.
Wendy
Hi Wendy! It sounds like you started journaling around the same age I did. As I get older, my journals become more alike, especially since I’ve started using the same sketchbook for journaling (I think I’m on my third or fourth blank book). I love the idea of incorporating the mundane into journal writing, and I agree that it adds as much insight as emotional material.
Thank you for the post, and very especially for the imaginative 25 ways to journal. I’ve been journaling for a long time and only recently switched to digital format; I intend to make words as “transparent” as possible, so experiments with the page setup looked like an additional “distraction” to me more than a possibility to increase creativity (maybe because I am not a very visual person).
Regarding the technique of writing some sentences and leaving some blank space to expand the writing later, it made me recall the oven metaphor: I have the need to write things right away, I cannot go back to the events later, with a very different mood: the oven has “cooled down”.
Thanks for your insight, Nacho. I think that in presentation, white space is important, particularly with poetry and online publishing. When we write things down immediately, we can capture the immediacy of our emotions (especially if they’re intense). On the other hand, if we wait until we cool down, we may be able to capture a different (or more objective) perspective. It’s interesting to think about these two approaches and consider how they affect our writing in different ways.
Incidentally, I spotted this at the bookstore the other day when I was out with my almost 21-year old niece, and we both just flipped through it, enthralled. The difference is that I still really don’t think I could DO this (grin). She, on the other hand? Well, let’s just say … guess what she’s getting for her birthday next month?
Did you know there are other, similar journals also by Keri Smith?
Ha! That’s awesome, Deb. I can understand how messy journaling would be unappealing. After all, I used to be hyper-organized. But if you want to try it, it’s really just a matter of changing your mindset a little bit. Several years ago, I was at a friend’s house. It wasn’t dirty, but there was a little clutter here and there. She apologized and remarked that sometimes they were just too busy living to keep everything organized. That struck me and stuck with me. It got me wondering: how much time was I spending organizing my closet or alphabetizing my books/CDs/files that I could have spent writing or doing other things? Since then, I let up on being so rigid. I can’t say I prefer one way or the other. I still like things organized! But I also like spending my precious time on projects that matter a lot to me. To each her own, right? Still, I say it’s worth a try (hint hint).
As the daughter of a parent with Aspergus Syndrome,, Journal writing is my OCD. I have been writing in a Yearly Journal since 1973. For me it is life consuming, but also very rewarding. With each passing year the Journals have become more than just a Diary,, like you said Melissa, they are filled with clippings, poems, and world news events. When I pass away the Journals will be my legacy.
A journal can be a wonderful legacy! It sounds like you’re quite committed to your journal, which is awesome. Keep at it!
This is brilliant. It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for!
Thank you for this post.
You’re welcome, Jane.