Journal Hoarding by Annette Dashofy

Every so often, I go on a de-cluttering binge. I sort through my clothes and make piles to donate. A few ancient T-shirts and pairs of jeans that are too threadbare or full of holes go into the trash. 

My office received the de-clutter treatment a couple of weeks ago. I went through stacks of papers. Filed some. Ran others through the shredder. I still have a pile or two that need to be organized. But there’s one cubby in my office shelving unit that I can’t de-clutter. In that cubby, I keep my journals. 

I have been an avid journaler for ages. In high school, I kept one of those small bound diaries with a lock. I have no idea where that one went.

But I again started putting down my thoughts on a mostly daily basis three decades ago. At first, I used spiral-bound, college-ruled notebooks. Nothing frilly. At some point, someone gifted me with a beautiful notebook designed for the very purpose of journaling. It had a cat on the cover. From then on, no more notebooks purchased from the back-to-school sales for me. 

On a whim, I dug through my stacks of hoarded journals and found one dating back to August of 1992. I have a feeling there are earlier ones somewhere in this house, but opening this one and reading a few entries was enough to transport me to a different time in my life. 

Sunday, August 30, 1992

The remains of Hurricane Andrew had squelched our plans to go camping Friday, and we decided to scrap the whole weekend’s camping trip, figuring the trails at Beaver Creek had to be a muddy mess at best. 

(Beaver Creek is an Ohio state park where we used to take our horses and ride the trails.) 

Reading on, I revisited a time when we rented movies (VHS, I bet) and cleaned stalls. There are mentions of friends who have passed on and a few who are still in our lives. I wrote about a favorite restaurant and shop, both of which are now shuttered. I was baking zucchini bread, brewing sun tea, and handmaking Christmas gifts. 

I was still riding my beloved old mare, Jenny, and attending the long-gone Hickory Auction. Alexander was my house cat, while Barney lived in (no surprise) the barn, keeping the mouse population under control. 

And my mom and dad and father-in-law were all alive and well. 

For the most part, my journals are badly written and contain boring day-to-day stuff. Who came to visit. What I fixed for dinner. Mundane tasks. And yet, there is no way I would part with any of them. Opening a page is like striking a match to ignite the memories of my youth. 

Do you keep a journal? Have you ever done so? If you do, do you keep all of them? Feel free to share a few of your journaled memories. 

Keeping a Writer’s Journal

I have kept journals for many decades. Even before my creative writing professors encouraged me to keep them, I kept writer’s journals after reading that writers I respected, such as Virginia Woolf and Madeleine L’Engle, had kept writer’s journals. I have stacks and stacks of them, and periodically I wade through years of them, reading and mining for ideas and memories.

You will notice I did not say I’ve kept diaries. A diary is an account of your day-to-day activities. A writer’s journal is the artist’s sketchbook of a writer. It holds the raw material, the thinking on paper, that goes into learning how to write better and into creating minor and major projects.

A writer’s journal may have accounts of daily activities in it, along with discussions of current events, descriptions of the striking woman seen at the coffee shop, the idea for a new novel, the first few paragraphs of a short story, lines or whole stanzas of a poem, descriptions of the sound water makes dripping from trees into a fountain at the park, pages of location or historical research, a scary near-miss turned by what-if into the germ of a story or novel, lists of words I love, scenes recaptured from my childhood or other past moments, and much, much more. Writing exercises. Lists of possible titles. The initial sketches of characters. Accounts of dreams. Rants and complaints and a good bit of whining, as well.

Now, I also keep computer journals as I write each novel. This is where I go deeper into character, work out plotting difficulties, set myself goals for the next chapter or section of the book, and keep track of things that impinge on the writing of the book. Older versions of this are what I turn to when I need to find out how long I think it will take me to complete some phase of the new book. Also, it’s where I look for encouragement when going through tough times on a book. I almost always find I’ve made it through something similar before. I keep my journals in bound books between novels and in addition to the novel journals kept on the computer.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve found ideas or characters or settings for stories, poems, and books while going back through these journals—or found ideas that connect with other ideas I have to complete the concept for a novel or poem. Also, as I look through them, I can see on the page how my writing has improved over the years. I consider these journals necessities for my continuing growth as a writer. Just as a musician continues practicing the scales and more ambitious exercises daily, just as a painter continues sketching constantly, I keep opening my journal and writing down a description or an idea or a question I’m wrestling with or a character I’m exploring. Madeleine L’Engle called her journal work her “five-finger exercises.”

I often tell young students to keep journals, even if they don’t want to become writers. I believe it will help them navigate the fraught waters of adolescence. I know it helped me come to terms with a damaging, abusive childhood and write my way out of the anger, pain, fear, and shame it engendered in me. I’ve used journaling as an effective therapeutic technique with incarcerated youth, and I believe it’s something anyone can do to help them work their way through emotional pain and problems.

I have plain spiral notebooks, composition books, three-ring binders, and an assortment of bound books of many sizes and appearances. I have heard some people say they could never write in a really beautiful bound book because it would intimidate them, but I write even in the gorgeous handmade ones friends and family give me as luscious gifts. The act of writing is what keeps me from becoming too intimidated to write.

What about you? If you’re a writer, do you keep journals? In notebooks or on the computer or both? Have you found it useful?  And if you’re not a writer, have you used a journal before to work through thorny issues?