Journaling

MidniteRose

Virgin
Joined
Oct 9, 2010
Posts
12
I am curious to see how many writers actually Journal on a daily or weekly basis. Does this help with ideas, work out kinks from current stories that are in the works? How are the ways do writers Journal? I use to keep Journals all the time, especially when I would take writing classes in college. Our professor would play nonverbal music in the background and I found it really helped stir up ideas. I've recently found my hand written blurbs and randomness, and I was surprised to see what I had put on paper so many years ago. :cattail:

Please share ideas. I'm curious what lit writers will suggest.:rose:
 
Last edited:
I've written in a journal consistently since I was 13, which I've used both for a lot of self reflection and keeping ideas for my writing. I think it is an amazing tool that has helped me to improve as a writer.
 
I've written in a journal consistently since I was 13, which I've used both for a lot of self reflection and keeping ideas for my writing. I think it is an amazing tool that has helped me to improve as a writer.

Do you look back and reread what you had written? What do you think when you read back in your journals? What started you in journaling?

I've been amazed of the randomness I've written and some have turned into short stories, poems, or more.
:cattail:
 
I journal and write in my dairy now you may thing these are the same thing but they aren't! a journal records what my goals and expectations are and how i feel about where I am at on the road to getting there. my dairy is more about my dreams and desires and how they make me feel and how i feel about them. I use my dairy to spin story ideas from dreams fancies and whatever while I use the journal to build a personality for the people in my stories.
 
I don't journal in the true sense. What I do have is a "plot bunny" notebook. When I get an idea I write down the bare bones of it. I then sit down once a week and look through the ideas and start outlines.

The stories don;t all grab me right away, so I keep going through the process until I "feel" one and then I get serious with it.

I had a scare last month when I was writing in it at lunch during work and forgot where I left it. Bad enough it's all erotic stories, but many are incest related. Luckily the person who found it is the only one I work with who knows I write erotica so as he said "he was afraid to look inside of it"
 
I keep a journal notebook with me at all times, but don't write diary style notations. I write story outlines, poems, poem and story particles, essays or essay ideas, etc.

So my journal is messy, rambling, and sometimes stream of consciousness.
 
I've recently had to make a committed effort to keeping what I write about in my journal clear and easy to understand. Like some others in this thread, I use mine mainly to catalogue plot ideas and pieces of writing that buzz around in my head, mostly so that I don't forget them later. The problem I have is that the stuff I write down might make sense at the time, but going back and looking at them later when I want to remember them strips each entry of context; stuff that was so clear at the time is now a haze of half forgotten images and sounds. Even making an effort, the best I can remember is maybe half the completed picture.

Which rather defeats the purpose, as you can imagine :D
 
Journaling/Diaries

I find myself writing in journals when new stories brew in my mind. I'll write as much as I can till I'm tired. I then I will type what I had written and it helps with editing too, because I can catch as much errors as I can as I type. As far as a diary. I haven't done that in a long long time. Thanks everyone for the great tips and more. Keep them coming.

Please take a look at my blog as well. ;)


I am happy to say I finished a story that came to be 26 pages and now I'm reviewing it for edits and hope to post it in Lit very soon.:cattail::kiss:
 
I wouldn't say journal, really. I keep a pocketbook where I scrawl down a few ideas that pop into my head from time to time. Perhaps it is a witty phrase I overheard, or the description of a grotesque image that I may have encountered that day. Maybe it's an interesting word that I found when I skimmed a dictionary that day (which I do often).
I am in a relationship with someone overseas, and he likes to write stories for me. I'll sometimes return the favor and write down a poem in it.

Honestly, it's just a little book in which I write blurbs and fleeting thoughts, but I do it often enough.
 
These is nothing worse than losing your story book! that is why I have mine on my computer in a hidden file. That way anyone roaming around my house or computer wont find it and if I lose the file well at least no one else can find it either! no one knows what I write about and I like to keep it that way!
 
Good! Looks like I'm NOT the only one that writes down story ideas on paper before losing it to bad short term memory. I have over 200 stories and ideas writtern on legal pads and loose leaf paper, in composition books and notebooks. I keep them close to my desk, so I don't lose them or my wife and her friends can read them and make recommendations. My most erotic ones in the same drawer as my wife's toys: She does like to read them.
 
Yep, I've been journaling for 20 years...same here ;-p I usually just write however it wants to come out, and only editing if the red lines show up. Then I wait a good while and go back and read the block of notes, edit and clean it up because I get paranoid I'll get hit by a bus and somebody will get the laptop and read it...so I want it to look good :D

Most of the stories I write come from experiences and when I write journal entries, I tend to write it as if it's a story, with dialogue when I remember it verbatim anyway. It's also good to review and see where I was at any given point in an experience, see where things are heading, where they may have jumped track...
 
journaling

I have always kept some sort of diary. When I got serious about writing erotica I started writing down soome of my fantasies that I had during masterbation and also details about real life encounters and I try to weave them into my stories. I truely am in each story I write.
 
I have an ideas journal. Whenever I have an idea for a story, I write it down on a journal so I won't forget what I want to write about when I do have time to get back to it.
 
I make a point of journaling every night before I go to bed. I often write down ideas and little things that happened to me throughout the day that I think would make fun little moments in a story.

I find this to be a great way to help me organize my thoughts when I'm writing a story later on.
 
How useful?

I have never used journal, and I don't have the guts to maintain one. i know i will misplace it.

Is this a technique that all experienced authors use?

Normally, when a nice idea comes into my head, I will write it down on a piece of paper(if there is no erotic content), and throw the paper away. Except for one piece about a sunrise that was written in 2001, I have never thought about revisiting anything I have written.
My logic: I have experienced and expressed it. Like chewing sugar cane, once the sweetness has entered my system, whatever remains is just waste.

And there arises my real question: How often does a regular user of journal, who makes all the entries with as much clarity as possible, actually revisit the ideas expressed in it with the same vigor in which it was initially written?
 
I've kept a journal on and off for as long as I can remember. I'm not terribly consistent, I'll admit, but I always feel most at ease with something to write on and with just in case. I also wrote my first erotic stories by hand in a notebook because I didn't feel comfortable having them on a computer where anyone else might find them! ;)
 
I don't journal and I've tried, anything from the typical Dear Diary to tracking food intake, as well as just ranting on a piece of paper in a notebook. I can't stand doing it. lol

My mother however has since she was a little girl, and told me recently that after she passes away and we girls find her journals, she wants us to realize everything she wrote was written "in the moment" and though some things will be really painful for us to read, she cannot bring herself to throw the journals away.

I love her for this gift, yet I am in no hurry to receive it. :heart:
 
I have been journaling since I was six...yes rereading the old ones is amusing as heck...lol Its also an eye opener about how the mind matures.

I leave my journals lying around now. Not caring who reads. My kids have been known to snoop, but I figure its a way to show them I am human.

I went from telling about my day/experiences to conversations with my muse. I have hundreds of half full notebooks laying around my house, but I rarely mix stories with journal entries. I remember every story I start, its the filler stuff that seems to elude me the most. Though I have merged stories.

Journaling keeps me sane, clears my head, and gets the useless junk out of the way.

My stories are me, intimately so. The journaling has helped me understand how I would behave in life situations which gives me an edge on character creation. I am shy and outgoing, I am deep and shallow, I am brave and a coward, I can draw off of that knowing rather easily. Generally speaking we are all different aspects of the same person.

I do use my phone calander to write events that spark the thought process. One liners, or reminders for later, but the thing that happened is not the thing that makes it ito the story usually.
 
Get a reading copy of Steinbecks JOURNAL OF A NOVEL (East of Eden).
 
I have just started keeping a journal, though it's unrelated to my writing as far as idea's and such go. I keep a note book with me and write down and lines of thought, idea's, random notions that I get in that and keep my journal as a sort of diary/log.
 
I can't keep a journal going, the longest I kept one going was for about 10 years, but there were gaps in there of up to a year.

Maybe I'm too set in my ways, I tend to like a day to day routine, and except for vacations or other special happenings, so a journal of what happened is pretty boring. I even went back to a diary I kept in the sixth grade, it was filled with entries like,"Went to school in the morning and came home in the afternoon, lunch was peanut butter and jam."

It's hard to keep it up with entries like that. For writing I have a file of story ideas, I write one down when they happen, and go over it regularly.
 
I am the worst journaler ever. If I watch a Jane Austen film I get inspired but after a week of pensive thinking and staring off into space to think great thoughts and journal them I give up. I am prone to a cup of tea to complete the tableau. But I realize I am not a journaler. Its not even a word 'journaler'. I bought nice books and paper. I admire people who can but I am a failure here.
 
Back
Top