Writing: Journaling- The writing that writers write when they write about writing without actually writing "real writing"

Is there a point to whining and babbling onto paper if it isn't "real" writing?

After hearing the amazing song “Hi Ren,” by the British singer/rapper/musician Ren a couple of years ago, I took some time to do a couple of “completely different” drawings. Mostly then I was drawing people, images that I transferred from a photo, then filled out in color in my Sharpie Scribble Style. Inspired by “Hi Ren,” I did a couple of drawings completely out of my head, freehand. The point was to get out of my routine, and try something new, and a little bit scary, even if it sucked. This was one of those drawings, and on the floor of this room is a poem I wrote called “You’re Doing it Wrong.” #sharpiescibblestyle #steveemigart

A pen or pencil. A notebook of some sort. A brain with some ideas rolling around it, usually a kind of fucked up brain with some issues to work out. Let’s face it, happy, successful, normal people don’t want to be writers. That’s all it takes to journal.

It’s cheap. It’s easy. It’s not “real” writing, so it’s not scary. When we journal, you just let the ideas ramble onto the page. What you had for lunch. The stopped up toilet that bummed you at at McDonald’s last Tuesday. The job you have, the job you don’t have, or the job you find soul crushing. Anything is fair game when you journal. Is journaling worth while? Or is it a waste of time? Here are my thoughts on it.

Journaling isn’t just for writers, there are plenty of reasons for all kinds of people to keep journals. You can journal just to have a little record of things happening in your life over a span of time. You can journal to record particular experiences, like while you travel, when you’re going to college, or going through some kind of new experience, good or bad. You can journal to keep track of cool ideas you have for projects or work. You can journal about your aspirations, the things you want to do. You can journal about the things that piss you off, things that you want to change. If you’re a writer, or aspire to be a writer, a journal will probably be a little bit of all of those things.

Are there any “rules” for journaling? Not really. You can journal any way you want. I do, however, have some basic recommendations. Personally, I highly recommend that you actually hand write a journal with a pen or pencil, on paper. Why? Because any type of digital technology can be hacked, tapped into, or scanned for metadata, and the whole point of journaling is to dig into your deepest and most private thoughts and ideas. Nobody else needs to see that stuff. Weird thoughts, sarcastic snippets, half-formed concepts or ideas, or that really freaky scene from that one story in your head could freak people out, if they read it.

I’ve actually had law enforcement people read my journal and personal ideas, multiple times. It’s not good. The funniest incident was when I was on a furniture moving trip, heading over the Sierra Nevada mountains, coming back from Reno. While the driver was at the wheel, I was writing a long letter to a female friend who had moved to Oregon. I spent 3 or 4 pages imagining the mating habits of sasquatch as we drove through the mountains. It was just some funny thoughts I wrote to amuse my friend. A CHP officer pulled the truck over for speeding. The patrolman spent several minutes reading through my letter, which I left on the dashboard when we had to get out of the semi truck. He had the weirdest look on his face when he walked back up to us. It was not a happy look.

You feel really violated when someone you don’t expect reads your journal, for one thing. Then, it’s just fucked up when you’re trying to work out your own thoughts about one odd or half-baked idea or another, and then someone else reads it the incomplete concept, projecting all of their weird ideas into your words. The kind of people who snoop into other people’s journals, whether it’s a nosy mom, a friend, or a cop, they always seem to have far more fucked up ideas than writers tend to. I’ll say that straight out. They project all kinds of freaky ideas into your words. It’s bad. The point is, it’s best to write journal on paper, by hand, and not let anyone read it. Keep it to yourself. Writing on a laptop, tablet, or phone, using either the hard drive or an online platform to store it, just puts your raw thoughts into the digital world. Anything in the digital world can potentially be hacked into, particularly in today’s crazy political climate. It’s best to avoid that, in my opinion. Writing on paper with a pen keeps it out of most people’s hands… and heads. Let them read your finished work, not the mish mash of ideas that got you there.

You can set down a certain time to write, or just jot down some ideas when you have time throughout your day. Whatever works. And… you can write whatever you want. Really. You can. Anything. The real key to helpful journaling is to be as honest as you can. That’s hard, but it’s also where journaling can be really helpful, on multiple levels.

You can journal at home, at a park, in your car at lunch, late at night when everyone else is asleep, or whatever works for you. You can organize each page into a format to keep track of certain aspects of your life over time, moods, the weather, what you ate, where you are, if you travel a lot, whatever.

What if you don’t feel like writing? When I started following a bunch of writers on Twitter a couple years ago, this is what most of the tweets seemed to be about. “I don’t know what to write.” I keep getting sidetracked on Twitter (or Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, etc.). Newsflash… if you don’t feel like writing, then don’t write. Take a walk. Go ride your bike. Do laundry. Shop for groceries. Go have a couple beers at your local bar, whatever. Sitting around getting yourself worked up about writing, especially writing about writing, is pointless. If you don’t want to write, then don’t write. Maybe you’re just a complete fucking poser, and you just want people to think you’re a writer. That’s fine. Go to the local coffee shop and talk to the other posers about that novel you’re two chapters into… after nine years.

Did that sting a little? Good. There are plenty of actual writing posers out there. But there are even more potentially good writers who struggle with whether they should be writing, if they really have anything worthwhile to say, and all of that. Those are blocked writers or conflicted writers, and that’s a completely different thing than being a poser writer. Or poseur, because writing it in French makes it seem cooler.

Journaling for conflicted, blocked, and struggling writers can be a great thing. Here’s the trick, if you aren’t sure what to write about in your journal, just start writing about what has pissed you off lately. Anything. Everyone has an inner list of things that piss them off on a regular basis. Write about those things. It’s cathartic. Get that negative bullshit out of your system. Often writing all that angry crap leads to either a cool idea, or some funny idea. And then the writing heads off in a more positive direction.

Instead of looking at the paper, or your screen, and getting mad because you can’t think of anything brilliant right this second, write about something that pisses you off. “Why does that guy next door always rev his motorcycle three times, really loud, right before he parks it and shuts it off?” “I hate that motherfucker. I’d like to shove a potato in his tailpipe and…” You get the idea. Either you will make yourself laugh thinking about how you would like to respond to that annoying person, or maybe you’ll get an idea for some piece of writing. “Hey, I could write a short story about that…” Either way you get some of that negativity out of your system. Almost always that leads you into some other subject to write about for a while.

Here’s the big secret about journaling, particularly for writers and creative people, it gets your hand used to listening to your brain. You get used to just letting some kind of thoughts flow out of your skull, through your arm, out of your hand, and onto the paper. When you write something on a regular basis, anything, you begin to have a lot less anxiety every time you sit down to write. After a while of doing this regularly for a while, the Universe lets a really cool idea sneak through. You’re just writing along, and then-BAM- two and a half pages of a really cool idea winds up on the page. You look at it and go, “Holy crap, that’s a cool idea.” Then you can build up on it.

Often that piece of a project that had you stumped is suddenly figured out. Maybe a writing or art project, or maybe something else entirely. Insights have a way of sneaking up on you when you least expect them. The more you sit down and journal on a regular basis, the more little things like that happen. There’s a time for trying to just plug through a story or writing idea. There’s also a time for just writing about whatever is on your mind in your journal, and often that’s when a needed piece of the puzzle suddenly sneaks through your thoughts, and onto the page.

I’ve been journaling since my early 20’s, shortly after I moved out of my parents’ house, where my mom would snoop into everything, and journaling was impossible. I’ve been writing down my thoughts on a regular basis for somewhere around 37 years. I’ve used standard, spiral bound notebooks that whole time. I rarely go back and read over them, unless I’m working on a specific project, like The Poet series I’m doing here on Substack. I did a ton of journaling before I started writing that series. What do I do with my old journals? I wind up ripping up the old writing, and tossing it in the garbage a couple of years later. That works for me.

In any case, I highly recommend journaling in general. In my case, I do some venting, some written rambling, and I work out rough thoughts into more coherent ideas. Then some of those ideas, like the idea for this post about journaling, wind up in some of my self-published writing. If you’ve been thinking about it, or got inspired by this post, give journaling a try. Just write something, and don’t worry if it’s good or not. It’s not getting graded. don’t even grade yourself, just put thoughts down on paper. Try it for a while, use your own intuition, and see if it helps you do whatever it is that you do, or would like to do. If it helps, keep writing that journal.

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