5 Reasons to Journal About Your Writing

A journal is a terrific instrument for self-reflection and awareness, but did you know it’s also a helpful writing tool? By documenting your thoughts and feelings about your writing, you can strengthen your resilience and make important connections between who you are and what you write.

Here are five reasons you should journal about your writing.

1. Boost Your Mood

Journaling is a great way to reduce your stress.

The very act of expressing your emotions can jump-start your ability to process them. When you leave your worries, anxiety, pain, and fear behind on the page, they stop stealing your mental energy. This makes space for your creativity and imagination.

So jot down your feelings about the form rejection slips or appalling book reviews and make space for fresh stories and ideas.

2. Provide Perspective

A writing journal is a low-risk way to reflect on the choices you’ve made.

Frustrated that you missed a deadline or turned down an opportunity? Use your journal to explore why you did. Likewise, you can also use the process to review your past failures and successes.

A journal is also a useful tool for analyzing future options.

Use it to explore how you feel about new or different plotlines, combining characters, or even changing a story’s point of view. You can also explore how you feel about real-life career opportunities, or examine your writing motivations without judgement.

3. Strengthen Your Voice

Your writing journal is a great tool for self-discovery. The act of journaling can help you clarify your thoughts, opinions, and values. You can also use it to work through writing or creativity blocks and problem solve.

By gaining a deeper understanding of your internal conflicts and external challenges, you will increase your emotional intelligence, which can improve your writing, too.

4. Journal Your Progress

It takes time to develop any skill, and writing is no different. But when we don’t chart our progress, it’s easy to lose track of how far we’ve come.

Your journal is a chronological record of your journey. Not only can reading early entries show how much your writing has improved, it’s also a great tool to track your daily accomplishments. Recording all of your thoughts and ideas in one place is useful. Overtime, your entries will provide you with insight into how your process has developed. This can also help you identify patterns in your behavior or where you often get stuck.

Your writing journal is also a terrific place to celebrate your successes. Reviewing these types of entries can be helpful when things get tough and you struggle to remember why you write. Similarly, you can also use it to document your creative highs and breakthroughs.

5. Achieve Your Goals

You can use your journal to help you plan your writing future.

A journal provides a platform where you can think about ambitions, aspirations, and milestones for your writing.

Use your entries to set your intentions, keep your thoughts organized, and keep yourself accountable.

Ready, Set, Journal!

Whether you choose an online application, a desktop document, or a blank notebook, a writing journal can help you document and navigate your writing journey. Just like your stories, your journal can become another creative outlet for you. A place to jot down ideas, explore themes, and experiment without risk. Plus, once you’re that big-time author, you can use your entries as memoir fodder!

Do you keep a writing journal?

Header Photo by Noémi Macavei-Katócz on Unsplash