Panning for Ideas
© Roxianne Moore
I've been lax lately about keeping my writing journal up to date. I've kept a journal for more years than I can remember, but I certainly wouldn't call it a diary. Some months, I'm lucky if I write once a week, let alone once a day.
Perhaps the problem is boredom. After twenty-odd years of writing in spiral notebooks, maybe I need to do something different. In truth, I have tried other avenues, methods to keep me going. I've bought or borrowed books on journaling. I've read Natalie Goldberg's books (Writing Down the Bones, and The Wild Mind) cover to cover several times, using her exercises as jumping off points. I've started pages with a question, or a quote, or a fragment of a half-remembered dream.
My latest inspiration is to use my journals as a serious resource for ideas. Oh, I've used my journals all along, especially for writing poetry and fiction. But I realized that within the pages of the spiral notebooks that line the bottom shelf of my bookcase, I have a guide to all my passions, my disappointments, my emotional triggers.
Reading through old journals can be humbling, as well. I read things I wrote in college, and I wonder how I ever managed to convince myself that I could be a writer. I mean, there I was, majoring in International Politics, and what I really wanted was to be a writer. The trouble is, all my writing either sounded like policy position papers, or the ravings of a stressed-out adolescent.
In later years, I learned a little more control. But control is not the essence of journaling. I find that the material in my journals is most interesting and most useful in my writing when I go off on tangents or rage about some petty slight I suffered at a social gathering. That's the stuff to build my writing.
The other nice side effect of gleaning the fruitful bits from my journals is that I'm usually inspired to start writing again. Sometimes I'll start a special journal, a notebook based simply on my reaction to things I wrote several years ago. Aside from expanding on my original ideas, I'm fascinated by how much my viewpoint can change over the course of a few years.
If you've never written a journal page in your life, or if you're just plain stuck the way I've been, maybe you need some inspiration. Finding online resources for improving your journal- writing skills can be a real challenge. You might want to check out Journal Writing Resources, including Ira Progoff's Intensive Journal Workshop, Writing the Natural Way, The New Diary, and more.
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