Keeping a journal is a way to transcend yourself and your yesterdays. Like alchemy, a journal offers eternal life for your thoughts and experiences. It enhances introspection. As Garrison Keillor once said, "We write in order to find out what we think." Journaling is a daunting and wonderful habit to make and keep.
My diaries are a tool to ensure that I don't pass through life blindly; they hold me accountable for my thoughts and actions; they pause my scurry in order to look closely at life. I can read a page from the past; and the event or emotion springs to life. I think of other lost memories and wish I had recorded them while freshly experienced.
I recall flying from Bangladesh to NC the night after my dad died. The cabin was dark and others were sleeping. I was alone with my emotions and memories and felt that my dad was with me. A lifetime of memories flooded me. I knew I should pull out a notepad or computer and make a record of these sibylline hours that often follow the death of a loved one. I thought the experience would be there when I landed but the epiphanies about my dad and his meaning to me were already faded.
I've started and abandoned many journals and learned a few things along the way. In this blog I hope to encourage you to take up journaling, as well as to remind myself why I should stick with it. I'll share my experiences and provide a variety of approaches to consider.
At the very least, your journal will provide a record that you lived and breathed, had thoughts, and tried to make something of your life. It can also be elevated to an art form through the quality of the blank book, paper and pen that you choose, through careful handwriting and layout, and the graphics or sketches you add, no matter how amateur they may be. Your simple art or doodling around the entries makes the page more visually interesting.
When I turn to my journal I am giving time for quiet reflection, or responding with emotion to something in my personal life or current events. A first-hand account of watching the falling twin towers. A yellow and orange kite flying against a backdrop of snow-capped Himalayan mountains. My brother's life and death.
When months pass between entries, I think "I couldn't have been that busy, or surely something happened worth recording between last date and today." I've learned not to self-scold, just to pick up from where I was, even if a year later, and start anew.
My first journal, at age nine, was white with pink trim and had a key. The key was the best part, signifying that my thoughts were private and my stories revealed only to myself. This diary is lost to me now, but most likely my account of life was similar to a journal written by my husband's mother as an adolescent with each daily entry of activities a repeat of the day before – Today I ate breakfast, went to school, came home, practiced piano, ate dinner, went to bed.
A blank journal is a wonderful gift for children and they will be aided by a few writing prompts such as the following: Tell one thing that happened today that was good or bad, how you felt about it and what caused that feeling. Tell one thing you saw today and what made it interesting or special. Share a wish or dream. Write about important people in your life. It is not your daily routine that matters so much as what was good or bad about your day, what you observed and pondered.
I met a young journal writer, Clara Grayson Steen, sitting in a meadow. She was there with her grandmother, who was attending a friend's birthday party. Always curious about young writers and artists, I sat down to chat with her and she told me the book was her journal. She told me she draws a picture or makes a design first and this helps her to think about what she is going to write.
A graphic journal is a diary that includes sketches. I met a young man in India who teaches children living in high poverty inner city neighborhoods to produce graphic journals of their life in comic format. Staff from his non-governmental development organization gather groups of children in community workshops and teach them simple drawing techniques they can use to record the story of their life as it is or wish it to be. You can download a guide at World Comics India. The American artist and author, Ed Emberly, is another resource in his series of kids' books on how to draw most anything.
Graphic journals are an effective tool to lower anxiety, process experiences and boost self-confidence in children. Does a child in your life dislike reading and writing or lack verbal or emotional capacity to express feelings? Has she experienced trauma? Does he have an interest in rocks, or dinosaurs or matchbox cars? Encourage children to produce their own book. This will be a treasure from their early years and a tool that often changes how children perceive themselves as a writer.
My hair stylist's son dislikes school and struggles with reading and writing. I asked her what he is good at. She was quick to answer, "He's mad about cooking. We give him ingredients he asks for and he concocts something. Sometimes it is tastier than others but we want to encourage him."
I suggested, "Why not build on his interest to help him develop skills and competence as a writer?" The next time I saw her she said that her husband made a special trip with the son to buy a blank book and colored pens for his cookbook diary. The son was so excited. Perhaps it will help him to see writing as a way to record his inventive recipes and his family's response to his cooking experiments.
My nephew disliked writing until he was encouraged to write phonetically. Children's thoughts are then unrestricted and can be recorded quickly. They will eventually pick up correct spelling. Here's a sample of a kid's journal, phonetically spelled. This was written many years ago by a boy named Geoffrey who attended an international school in Bangkok.
In fact, I am so excited about the redemptive power of art and journaling for young children that I used it as a device in my recent novel, The Drawing Game – a novel (Amazon.com). In this story two Bangladeshi children are able to escape child trafficking because of their graphic journals.
Graphic journaling has become my favorite tool for keeping a journal. I had minimal drawing skills so I spent some time with books that teach drawing and water color. Over time I can see improvement. The thing I love most about graphic journaling is that the sketching helps me to look closely at something, it is a form of meditation, a technique for appreciating the beauty of everyday life and experience. I now keep three graphic journals: gardening, birding, and travel.
I found great inspiration in the nature notes of naturalist Robert Johnson. I had the good fortune to see a retrospective collection of his work at the Blue Spiral 1 Art Gallery in Asheville (September 2021). You can see examples at this web site: https://www.bluespiral1.com/artist/698-robert-johnson].
Along with a large collection of his work, the gallery also had a display of the writing tools, soft-side journal, and color coding system he used – all fitting into a plastic food storage container he popped into his backpack. Johnson visited every state park in North Carolina, made notes and pencil sketches of fora, fauna, and geological features, and recorded nature's colors using a coding system. Back home he combined the sketches into a finished water color that was both realistic and impressionistic. One of his collections was called "Safe Spaces."
If you absolutely cannot draw but want to decorate your journals, consider Zentangle. It is simply advanced doodling on a small square of paper with a good quality pen, a pencil for outlines, and a blending tool for creating shadows. I have taken several courses (on-line and in person) from Samantha Taylor at Marsh Harbor Beads just outside Beaufort. She is an accomplished "Zentangler" with published works.
Marsh Harbor also sells blank books and fine pens and watercolor pencils that invite me to feel like a writer and author. Samantha shows students how anyone can produce a beautiful diary by drawing a Zentangle design on the page of each journal entry, using one of the many Zentangle resource books or design cards.
Some people are much too busy for such elaborated journaling that includes artwork. However, the busiest years in your life–working at a demanding job, raising children, juggling life's priorities- offer some real treasures, not just a record that you survived, but also a tool to help you balance priorities. Finding a moment may seem improbable but not impossible.
As a young mother, I aimed to keep a detailed journal on my children's growth, but quickly realized that basic survival and a little sleep were higher priorities. By chance I came across a journaling tool that helped me capture my children's first year.
I hung a "Baby's First Year" calendar over the changing table. With a pen attached to a long string. I found it easy to jot one thing every day. These little notes over time showed their blossoming personality and developmental steps.
When I realized my ambition to record my children's lives was craziness, I also came up with a compromise journaling strategy. I purchased a large scrapbook for each child, a place to put photos and notes. An artistic friend, Suzanne Yowell, a Durham, NC, fabric artist, made a cover for my daughter's scrapbook as a baby gift.
I committed to keeping a (sparse) record over the first ten years by highlighting some special events and primarily by setting aside two pages to recap each birthday with photos and notes. With little effort our children have a lovely record of early childhood with handwritten notes and photos.
My husband's journal over five years working in Tanzania was a monthly newsletter on scuba diving that included his beautiful photos. He also writes an annual New Year's letter.
Cousin Carol Cary and her husband, Richard Rackley, have a passion for exploring far flung destinations off the beaten path and recording each day's events in a simple travel notebook. Carol writes about funny things that happen, crazy people they meet, and different perspectives gained. These journals are so important to her that she puts a sticker in the cover on where they can be returned if lost and found.
While she has published travel journals with publisher.com, she thinks that her homemade picture albums annotated with excerpts from her journals are better able to capture the flavor of each trip than the more formal, labor intensive books.
My traveler friend, Jane Misch, agrees that her annotated picture scrapbooks are the best travel archives. Jane's advice is to write something every day. It can be expanded, condensed or edited later. "Finalize your trip journals as soon as you can upon returning home, or it probably won't get done at all."
Travel journals become memorable personal archives for busy people to take stock of what they loved and where they've been in life.
I keep a journal beside the Ipad on which I read the New York Times and sometimes watch a video. The political news of the day acts as a writing prompt. One day someone might look back with interest at my list of fifteen ways my world has changed due to Covid-19 pandemic. When I watch a movie, I draw Zentangle designs in my journal.
The George and Sally Brett family has influenced my life in so many ways, including the habit of journaling.
My friend, Sally Brett, uses a story prompt. Her children gave her a subscription to the service for Christmas. Sally receives a daily writing prompt from the company. After one year, her memories will be published in a beautiful book. Visit https://www.storyworth.com/about
George Brett had a fascinating approach to journaling. Over many years he took one photo a day. A long record of what he saw in his walks and also how he viewed the world. These are a treasure for his family since he passed away.
Their daughter, Megan, is an historian who relies on personal journals as documentation for her academic research. I asked her why journals are important historical documents and tips for writing. Here's what she said:
"Even if journals were not always intended as entirely private documents, they are still often less formal records of what was happening. Sometimes they also had a slightly better chance of surviving just by being a book-shaped thing rather than individual pieces of paper. Check out this resource published by George Mason University on why historians use journals and letters: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/letters/whydo.html."
Megan offered a suggestion for journal writers. "As someone who has worked with diaries, I will say that it's very helpful when the writer makes a note of where they are for each entry. One form of diary I am interested in working with in the future are people's travel diaries in the late 18th and much of the 19th century. Some of the people who kept these diaries intended to publish them later, or at least share them with friends and family, so they aren't always as deeply personal. On the other hand, they're recording their impressions of the cities and places and people they encounter, sometimes in really good detail (again, because they're writing for someone in the future)."
"For these sort of diaries, where someone is writing is a huge part of what they're writing about. But if someone is interested in keeping a journal or diary which might be useful later, making sure entries are clearly dated and have a general location (at least when you're not home) can be very helpful for the future historian."
I consider my letters the most important journals of my life from the years I was working and parenting while living abroad in six developing countries. When we moved to Puno, Peru, on the banks of Lake Titicaca I kept a journal but also wrote weekly letters home to my parents. At the end of the two years I realized that my journal entries were dull compared to my letters home, and I felt remorse that I had failed to keep a copy. Describing scenery and events to someone in a letter is certainly more vivid than writing to yourself.
Two years lost, I decided that in the future I would keep a copy of all my letters written from overseas, but still mourned those lost from our first post abroad. That summer I was back in NC for summer vacation. My mom handed me the letters from Puno, Peru, chronologically ordered and tied with ribbons. My heart nearly exploded with delight. One of my mom's greatest gifts, and one so symbolic of her ways of showing love and support for the life I chose.
So now I have a treasure trove of letters written from living abroad in six countries over twenty-four years. Friends have encouraged me to write a memoir. I realized that the box of letters was the material from which I could draw. A good retirement project. But the idea and the task became daunting. I also feared, like Wallace Stegnar in his novel, The Spectator Bird, that once I finished, there would be nothing left to do but die.
I could catalog my letters and start from the beginning, but this approach did not appeal to me, too linear. The project would shut me away with my computer, just when I wanted to fully live life. My friend, Brenda (The Swallowtail Midwife), suggested that I approach my memoir as a lifestyle book, a collage of my décor, cuisine, world travels and family lore. No special order, not a lot of formality, just a scrapbook of my life with a focus on what others might glean for their own lives.
That discussion fertilized an organic process for writing a journal and a memoir simultaneously, by using daily life events as touchstones to my past. By now those who follow my blog have realized that "Deborah's 3 Muses" is both a journal and a memoir. My approach is to stay in the moment and use current experiences as a segue to revisit my past; and to draw some insight from what the present teaches me about the past or vice versa. This has proven to be a more enjoyable and vibrant structure than a chronological memoir.
My son, Chas and his sweetheart, Katerina Don, printed the first six months of my blog posts and glued them in a blank journal, enhanced with Katerina's graphic designs. They gave me this extraordinary birthday gift in May. It was a thoughtful labor of love that helped me to further recognize my blogs as a memoir, the ultimate journal.
For those of you who have started and abandoned many journals, I hope this blog has inspired you to restart the process. Your collection of thoughts and experiences might just be your greatest legacy for generations to come.
Finally, if you are still not convinced about the balance of effort and reward, get a copy of the book featured in this blog. Remarkable Diaries, a DK Publication, is a pictorial collection of the world's greatest diaries, journals and letters. It includes photos of diary entries along with background information. Some of my favorites were Anne Frank, Charlotte Bronte, Beatrix Potter, Alexander Humboldt, Charles Darwin, and Michael Shiner's firsthand accounts of life as a slave.
I'll end with a quote from the foreword: "Diaries are among our greatest historical treasures – they bring a place, a person, the world to life. Through times of great change, upheaval, or suffering people keep writing to save themselves, to know that they are still present, not alone. At its best, as Anne Frank proved, the diary reveals the triumph of the human spirit."
Don't you think it's time to start writing?
Notes and Credits:
The Zentangle example is reproduced from The Beauty of Zentangle by Suzanne McNeill.
Photos of antique journals are from the book, Remarkable Diaries, DK Books Series, Penguin Random House, 2020.
Comments