A Note on Writing Journals

Something else I found during my late night cupboard-ransacking a short time ago was the corpses of several writing journals from TAFE.

In a few of our classes, we were asked to keep a journal. In it, we were to write down or thoughts and ideas, goals for writing, notes for our stories or poetry and anything else we could think of. If I remember rightly, the class was evenly split; half were in favour of keeping a writing journal, while the other half felt that their energy could be better spent elsewhere.

I belonged to the latter half. As much as I wanted to be organised enough to keep a journal, every attempt I made to do so lasted no more than a few days. I think the closest I ever got to keeping a journal was having a large Cadbury chocolate tin stuffed with wads and wads of random papers - including notepad pages, shopping receipts and restaurant serviettes - upon which I had scrawled various scenes and ideas for my multitude of novels. Usually when I had an idea for something, I would write it down straight away. If I saw a scene in my mind, I had to get it down there and then, not just write a few notes about it and then do the rest later (and yes, this frequently interfered with such activities as eating, sleeping and doing homework). I also tend to get a bit fussy with keeping things in order, so the idea of writing something down, only to realise that I should have written something else before it, grated at me (yes, I have been described - somewhat accurately - as being anally retentive about these things haha). Having loose sheets jammed into a tin allowed me to organise things in whatever order I liked.

I don't know... Maybe I was going about keeping a writing journal the wrong way. Perhaps other writers have other methods that make them more successful with it. I can see the value in them, but I just was never able to make them work.

How about the other writers out there? Writing journals, yay or nay? How do you think they help or hinder you in your own writing?

P.S. I have just begun an exercise book, in which I make a summary of all notes from workshopping feedback on each chapter as I workshop it, as well as ideas for changes. I'm hoping that having all the notes in one place will make it easier to work from. But we'll see how long I keep it going for...