The Magic of Journaling

 

“The habit of writing for my eye only is good practice, It loosens the ligaments.”  ~ Virginia Woolf 

Not only does journaling loosen the ligaments, but it also loosens the brain cells, the memories, the inhibitions and the heart.Writers need to journal. End of story.

I started journaling in earnest when I was 17 years of age. That was the year my family moved from the beaches of Florida to the deserts of Arizona. It was my senior year of high school and quite an inconvenient time for me to be uprooted, to say the least!  I was going to miss my final year of high school with my lifelong friends. I was starting all over again when I should have been at the top of my class.

I didn’t know anyone in this new place and I was sad, mad, lonely, yet intrigued at the newness of  it all — so many feelings, so I started filling the pages of notebooks with angst-filled scribbles.I still have those notebooks. Believe me, sometimes it’s not easy to read the drama of a teenager, especially when it was you! But the point is that as we journal, we find our feelings, our voice, our hidden inner muse. Journaling allows us to discover so much about ourselves that never comes out during our daily lives.

When we free-write in a journal, we give ourselves permission to record the ideas, fears, questions, strengths and brilliance that we tend to tuck away in a secret place. We can discover beautiful, insightful thoughts that might never see the light of day if we didn’t write them down.

One of the best experiences I had learning to journal was when I went through the exercises in “The Artist’s Way,” a book by Julia Cameron (www.theartistsway.com). I learned how to write “Morning Pages,” (which I still do), and go on an  “Artist Date,” (which I need to do more of). The Morning Pages are like a “brain dump.” I spend time every morning writing several pages of whatever comes to mind, first thing in the morning. No editing. No critique. No judgments. No punctuation. Just writing. I do this before I get involved in any other event, including feeding the cats and the dogs. It’s the first-thing-in-the-morning moment for me and it lets me write honestly about what is in my head and heart. It often includes the lingering memories from dreams the night before.

I have gone back and  re-read beautiful, passionate, insightful passages that sometimes don’t even seem like they came out of me!  That’s because I was journaling with no fear and no judgment.I believe that writers need to continue to write, and journaling is a good way to keep that energy going. Each writing experience – even if its only for our own private eyes — helps to stretch our imagination and lets us dig deeper into the ideas that make us, as writers, tick.Here are some additional resources about journaling. All comments are welcome! And, as always, thanks for visiting Murphy Writes.