the journal imperative

'morning pages' or bust?

How’s your journaling going?

When I regularly ask my writers this question, I get to hear about their breakthroughs and discoveries. They often whip out their journals and share a line or passage with me. These are exciting chats!

But, it doesn’t always go that way. Sometimes, and for some writers in particular, I get a lot of big sighs and ugghhs. I get a lot of self-judgment, as well as deep discomfort—obviously the question they’d wished I wouldn’t ask. In response to this question, I’ve seen one grown woman bang her fists on the table in front of her like a toddler and look at me wordlessly like, ‘Help!’

I’ve found that the common reaction of discomfort around journaling comes from two places:

• One, the writer is ashamed because they know journaling every day will be really good for them and their work, and yet they don’t ‘make the time’ or ‘get to it.’ Another failure!

• Two, they’re embarrassed because writing in a journal seems self-indulgent, like their own thoughts and feelings are so unimportant that they shouldn’t even matter to them. They’ve share with me week after week, “I try to do it but I have nothing to say!” (Notably, these writers typically don’t struggle with ideas for their public writing.)

Many people who know the benefits of journaling have gotten it into their heads that there is a right way to do it and all other ways are wrong. The right way is to do it every single day, for the same amount of time, length, or word count, and at the same time of day, for the rest of your life. The wrong way is not being able to do that. And if you can’t, don’t even try.

If the problems above sound familiar, I’d like to make journaling a happier place for you so you can actually reap the many amazing benefits. Read on!

Why journal?

It’s the most important tool a writer has. Journaling helps you find your voice, release anxiety and focus creative energy, put down burdens, practice ways of thinking and new perspectives. The place where you plan, dream, remember, and work out problems. It can be an outlet for your shadows.

Journaling regularly builds the practice of writing—it makes writing seem more possible, by allowing you to demonstrate (to yourself!) your creative power on a regular basis.

But crucially, the journal itself is not “writing,” as Julia Cameron explains of morning pages (three pages of journaling done as close as possible upon waking) in The Artist’s Way. This means the journal is not meant to be “good” and that the things you write aren’t meant to be “interesting” to you right away.

Here’s what I think it can be:

The journal as emptying place. When the process of journaling is unformed (especially when you write by hand or blind yourself from seeing the writing if using a laptop or other device), the journal is an emptying place, to express the fury, cynicism, or frustration of any one part of you that wants or needs to speak, a place to get things out so you can put them down and walk away. Now your hands are light enough to pursue other creative work, without the negativity and anxiety that burdened and shrouded your mind and filled you with self and other-judgment.

The journal as departure point. Your journal can also be full of “departure points” (places to start) for your public writing, including your ideas, questions, and various attempts at conveying an idea, story, argument, dialogue, or description. In this way, the journal can allow you to access a crucial element of practice—play.

The journal as meeting place. Where, if visited often, you will begin to see patterns in your mind that reveal your priorities and opportunities, the things that hold you back and places that get you stuck. You write your plans, goals, and dreams down. What you want to remember, what you hope to forget, what’s happened to you, what you’ve done. It’s where you meet yourself, and it can also be where you meet or embody (depending on where you are, and it is non-linear) your writing self. Your voice, your deepest understanding and questions, your self-doubt and your ambition, all will be revealed.

In these ways, journaling regularly and over time helps you build the writer’s most important resource of all—perspective.

So do you have to journal every day?

The rewards of journaling regularly are astounding. Journaling relaxes you, lowering your blood pressure and your stress levels. I’ve written about journaling as part of narrative therapy practice here and was interviewed about the ‘mind-expanding agent’ that is journaling on this podcast. I own the core belief that if everyone were taught to reflect regularly on their lives in some private format such as journaling, we would be better prepared for communication with others, more empathetic, more compassionate, more confident, and less reactive as a society.

So, yes, if you write in your journal every single day, that’s amazing. I’m 100% certain that that process has proved incredibly rewarding, or you wouldn’t be doing it still. (Journal-resistors who doubt the benefits of the process would do well to remember that too.)

But, when writers ask me if they’ll get any benefit from journaling if they can’t do it every day, my heart breaks. Who told them they wouldn’t? Because of the positive physiological effects of journaling, every session can improve your state of mind and help you relax. Over time, I believe those who can begin with a journaling process that is less routine-driven or less frequent will find themselves wanting naturally to journal more often.

If you want to journal every day or more regularly, make it to the end of this post where I have prompts that can help you get your practice going!

But you may find that it’s best to just let go of this idea that you have to journal every day to do it ‘right.’ If this is you, check in with your process for me—are there other areas of your writing process where you struggle to start because of perfectionism, or because you’re too focused on the end product? With your journaling as well, your idea of the distant whole is getting in the way of participating in your present slice of reality. Don’t try to write every day. Just write today. Just a few times a week. Write when you actually have a chance to and feel like.

Options for your journaling practice

I do want you to write more, here are some ways:

• Start slow. If goals help you, set a goal of writing in your journal once a week, like Saturday mornings—fifteen or twenty minutes that will always be yours. You may find that the effects are profound enough that you begin to want to journal more frequently, or for a longer amount of time. Let it come.

• Turn ‘morning pages’ into ‘pages’. Writing every single day at the same time and for the same amount of time just doesn’t work for everyone. There are certainly specific mind-clearing, anxiety-reducing, planning benefits of free writing in the morning, but it’s not the only way to journal. Julia Cameron, the creator of ‘morning pages,’ chose “three pages” and “in the morning” because that’s how much she could do between the time she woke up and when her infant daughter did. So if you want to write every day and have struggled with working morning pages into your life, just try ‘pages’—find your own intentional time that works each day, around fifteen minutes but could be less or more. First thing in the morning, or after a workout, or in bed at night (next), or at 2pm during the kids’ nap, or for the time it takes to fill the Chemex in the morning (I do this one).

• Try evening pages. Writing at night, before bed, can serve a different purpose than morning pages, allowing you to reflect on your day and calm yourself down before sleep—since writing by hand slows your heart rate and lowers your stress, you may find that night-writing is the way to go for you. Maybe this is when you release the tensions of the day, allowing the free mind to explore. (Prompts for evening pages just below!)

• Substitute note-taking. If you’re another kind of person, you may also choose to let go of the idea of routine at all and see if that frees you up to journal when you choose—when something comes up. Suddenly, many things may be coming up that you want to put down. In fact, you may find that you’re more of a natural note-taker than journal-er, who jots down fleeting ideas, thoughts, quotes, questions, and observations as they come throughout the day (and, so often, night). Note-taking is not inferior to journaling and has many benefits that journaling does not (I’ll write about this in the future). It’s just another way of participating as a writer in your own life, and can incorporate longer journaling sessions when the note-taker has the time and inclination. Note-takers by nature typically can’t help taking notes every day.

Prompts to help you write every day or more often!

Many writers greet the blank page of the journal with trepidation and anxiety. If you’re having trouble sitting down and opening a vein on the page, you might start with a gentle prompt. Let these take you where they want you to go.

Prompts for morning pages

1. What is top of mind for me right now?

2. What has been distracting me, keeping me up at night, or taking up space in my mind?

3. What’s a feeling I’ve been having lately that I wish I could let go of?

4. What am I grateful for in this moment?

5. How do I feel right now, in my mind, heart, and body?

6. What is a problem I am experiencing in my life or work that I can take a step to solve today?

7. What are my frustrations right now?

8. What is one thing I can accomplish today that I will feel proud of at the end of the day?

9. How do I want to feel when I go to bed tonight?

10. Did any experiences I had yesterday change me?

11. Is there something I need to communicate to someone today?

Prompts for evening pages

1. What is one thing I am proud of having done today?

2. What memories do I want to retain from today?

3. Did I reach any milestones?

4. Did I learn any lessons I want to remember?

5. Did any experiences today change me?

6. What can I hear right now? Listen for ten seconds and write down what you hear.

7. What is top of mind for me right now?

8. What has been distracting me, keeping me up at night, or taking up space in my mind?

9. What’s a feeling I’ve been having lately that I wish I could let go of?

10. What am I grateful for in this moment?

11. How do I feel right now, in my mind, heart, and body? Am I lying down, feeling the comfort of this warm bed? Am I next to someone? Do I feel full from what I got to do today, or drained by what I had to do?

12. Where am I?

Prompts for weekly writing (may include any of the above if not included here!)

1. What am I proud of this week?

2. What memories do I want to retain from this week?

3. Did I reach any milestones?

4. What did I learn?

5. Did I make any mistakes I can learn from?

6. Did any experiences change me?

7. What distracted me this week? What was my focus?

8. What am I grateful for?

9. Did anything unexpected happen?

10. What do I want to put down this week? What have I had enough of?

11. What is my intention for today, tomorrow, and the rest of this week?

12. How do I feel right now, in my mind, heart, and body?

13. Where am I?

Finally, you can always use the space of your journal on certain days for creative practice! Subscribe for my Friday creative writing prompts you can respond to in your journal. (This newsletter is free!)

Leave a comment or reach out to me at rachel@racheljepsen.com with comments or questions or to share your experience with journaling!

Happy writing, see you Friday for prompt 003.

Rach

p.s. For those of you wondering, I journal almost every day, and I take notes every day—I am a prodigious note-taker and always have been. If I wake up anxious, journaling has an immediate effect on my level of calm and my ability to plan and solve problems for the day. If I try to read and my thoughts are racing, gotta journal. I often use the journal to plan, as well as complain! “How dare they!” I often write. The self-righteous part of me has thankfully grown very small in my lifetime, but he can show up in my stress levels if I don’t give him a small, private outlet.

p.p.s. A final observation: On days I don’t journal, it usually means I’m feeling something I’m ashamed of and therefore don’t want to risk ‘writing down’—this has become an interesting pattern for me, an unexpected part of practice-as-mirror. Now that I’ve identified this pattern, if I feel resistant and journal anyway, I often find that the thing I thought I should be ashamed of isn’t anything at all—literally something I made up. I had to be able to experience writing it down and see it on the page to assess its accuracy or truth. So I’m incredibly grateful to my past selves every single time they chose to journal. It’s not time lost.

I encourage you to try finding a journaling practice that works for you, and keep coming back here for more inspiration for what to write and how to approach other writing blocks :)