Why keep a daily journal

One of the people interviewed for the book, A Better World Starts Here by Stacy Russo, was Carol J. Adams who is identified as a writer who has a Master of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School. One of the topics she talked about is the practice of keeping a daily journal.

Adams says that although she had made sporadic journal entries in the 1970s she was inspired to begin keeping a daily journal after she read Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way in 1996. Cameron suggests writing "morning pages," which actually came from Depression-era book Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande.

The idea, says Adams, is "you write when you first wake up in the morning. Now I know a lot of people do not handwrite any more, and that people are very busy in the morning; but this is often when the subconscious is closest to us, including remembering our dreams."

Within a month of beginning her daily journal, Adams read Morton Kelsey's Adventure Inward, and she quotes him: "It is important to remember that journal-keeping is a living process, like exercise. One does the same thing over and over to develop and maintain skill. Healthy living in body and soul and mind requires the constant repetition of certain practices." Adams says that when she gets up in the morning now she writes three or more pages in a dedicated journal.

She also rereads old journal entries. "I can go back to the journals from the time when I was caring for my mom, and there she is. If I miss her, I can go to my journal and find the sort of repartee that I had recorded just because I was recalling the day."

She says she writes the entries on one side of the page. "When I go back, I write the date at which I'm rereading it. And then I'll put comments on the other side of the page, so that the journal becomes something with which I'm interacting. I find a lot of serendipity related to which journal I decide to read at what time and how that intersects with what I'm experiencing as I read it. I think keeping a journal is one of the greatest gifts I've given myself."

I agree that keeping a daily journal is an invaluable exercise for anyone who wants to write. It's a way to capture observations, ideas, stories, experiences, snatches of dialogue. And while I do not return to my journal often, I have reread enough entries to realize what is most likely to interest my future self and improve tomorrow's entry. A journal is a gift you can give yourself—cheap, legal, and non-fattening.