Quite a few years ago, I found this community on LiveJournal dedicated to paper journaling. It was called Embodiment and if I remember correctly, the goal was to journal every day. People would post pictures of what they doodled and wrote. Some of the entries were amazingly detailed and looked like art. Basically, the community was like porn for me.
I took part in the challenge and occasionally posted some of my entries. I stopped because as you can expect from keeping a paper journal, people snooped and read everything. It was upsetting to know that someone close to me disregarded my privacy, just to look for their name in print.
Anyway, as I was trying to come up with essay ideas to submit to literary journals I realized that it was much easier to come up with stories when I journaled daily. All I had to do was go through past entries to string an idea together.
So, after much debating I’ve decided to start journaling again. Of course, it won’t contain anything so private that I’d be embarrassed or hurt if someone read it. It will just contain snippets of the day, overhead dialogue, story ideas, and the like. It will mostly be a writer’s notebook.
Would anyone be interested in the occasional picture post of my entries? It wouldn’t be a lot, just a few to get a glimpse of one way to use a writer’s notebook.
*Photo by Mateusz Stachowski
Reblogged this on filmcamera999.
Thanks. I’m glad that you liked it enough to reblog it.
I’ve had my share of snopes in my journal, then I started censoring myself. But after going back and rereading those entries, I knew I was missing vital information about that time in my life and it was disappointing. You’re right about helping the creativity flow, though. Journals definitely do that. Good luck with your next chapter of journaling!
Thank you!
I do wish that I could put more into my journal without the fear of someone snooping. There’s so many things that you forget if you don’t write the details down.
A picture of a page would be awesome. I’d see how you think things through. I’d probably pick up pointers on how I can improve my writing. Just remember, nothing ever said (or written in our cases) is ever completely ignored.
FWIW, I journal anyway, regardless how someone reading it “might” feel. I figure that if anyone is rude enough to snoop, they deserve what they read. That said, many times I’ve feelings that I can’t seem to get to the bottom of when writing under my own name. When that happens, I write it all in story form under a pen-name. I call those my “daydream files.” It’s amazing how much I learn about myself when I do that. Quite freeing, actually.
Hm, I’ve never tried the pen-name thing as a way to delve deeper in my writing. That’s a good idea as I can see how it would be freeing.