Janet Burroway, in her excellent text WRITING FICTION: "... a writer's journal is an essential, likely to be the source of originality, ideas, experimentation, and growth."
Aine Greaney in another useful book, WRITER WITH A DAY JOB, says "I strongly advocate for daily journaling as a way to build your daily writing practice and your writing voice."
The first chapter of Susan Tiberghien's ONE YEAR TO A WRITING LIFE? "Journal Writing." The opening sentence of that chapter? "The first step toward a writing life--and its foundation--is journal writing."
(I also happen to buy a lot of books about writing. Why does this not surprise anyone?)
But I don't "journal." Certainly not daily, and not anything resembling how the above advice-givers, and plenty of others, would have me journal.
This is not to say that I haven't tried it their way. Believe me, I've tried. And I've failed. So I do something else. Yes, I carry a notebook with me, and I scribble in it now and then. But I don't journal. What I do instead is Jot.
Jots aren't anything close to complete thoughts, or even complete sentences. Jots are potential story sparks, evanescent images I need to capture before they vanish, funny names, dream scenes, word combinations. Fictitious band names, lots of band names. And every so often, particularly when I'm fumbling around for a new story start, I page through last week's, or last month's, or last year's, jottings, looking for something that might ignite a blank page.
The top row in the picture is a sampling of my untouched notebook and journal collection. The bottom row, mostly smaller Moleskine notebooks or quad ruled Steno books, is filled with Jots.
I also have a Word document (laughingly named "Working Journal.doc") in the computer full of Jots, and an Easy Note file for my iPhone, too.
Here's half a dozen examples of what can be found inside those notebooks and docs, chosen more-or-less at random and taken verbatim:
1. Woman on subway - "I have taught myself how to sing every Michael Bolton song in sign language."
2. Liquor cabinet contents for list story.
3. I was nineteen and Jewish then.
4. Convention crasher.
5. Does Amber smile?
6. Two squirrels working their way through razor/barbed wire/chain link fence as if any other thorny vines.
And although I still feel bad at not being able to 'build my daily writing practice and my writing life' like every else does, this is what works for me. I wrote this blog entry instead of working on fiction because I wanted to start on something new, but didn't have a beginning. But now, looking at my Jots, I'm wondering about Amber, and why she never smiles. Maybe the nineteen year old Jewish boy can find that out.
Thanks for reading,
Stephen
