Becoming publishable
Personal Journaling
by Terrie Lynn Bittner
Many writers keep a writer’s journal. However, a personal journal is equally important for a writer. It allows you to return to various events and emotions from your past and recall them for your current writing. When you’re going through a crisis, you think you’ll never forget, but you do. A journal ensures you’ll always remember.
If you expect your journal to be handed down through the ages, you’ll find yourself being overly cautious about what you write. While this type of journal is important, it won’t work for your writing. If you don’t want to record events two different ways, simply keep your journal on your computer. Each week, print out the original journal and put it in your private notebook. Then edit it and print it again, in a more public journal. If you like to handwrite your journals, make the handwritten one the volume handed down to ancestors who will be more grateful than you can imagine, but type up a more honest version afterwards. You can type the exact words from your bound book and add a section at the end called, “What I left out.”
What belongs in this personal journal? First, of course, record critical moments in your life, those moments when everything changes. Record not just the events, but the sounds, smells, thoughts, and emotions. Record it the way you would write a scene in a book, with great detail and an awareness of the other people in the story. Include dialogue as you remember it.
It’s also important to record in your journal everyday things. If your children are small, you’ll be surprised how poorly you remember this hectic time in your life. Record what you did and how you feel about it. What are your joys? What are your fears? What are your hopes?
Don’t imagine your ordinary life is too ordinary to record. If you haven’t recently, read the Little House on the Prairie books. The events in her book are just ordinary, everyday events—in her life—and yet millions of children read those tiny, homey details everyday. Your life might turn out to be just as interesting as the world changes. The world that seems ordinary to you now will be ancient history to your children and grandchildren. My own children can’t comprehend a life without computers, microwaves, and color television, and yet I was a teen or older when those came about. I certainly never guessed how much the world would change in my own lifetime.
By keeping an honest and detailed journal, you’re creating your own personal reference guide to life as you lived it, and your readers will benefit from your research.