Controlling the quality of your journal may seem a strange concept. After all, writing it in the first place is supposed to be a freeing experience. You can do what you like on these pages, can’t you?
Well, of course, you can. But some people like to review their journals, checking - weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually – what the writing has achieved. These reviews are optional for some, crucial for others.
For you, wanting to ensure quality may be a central plank in your personal and working style. In Transactional Analysis terms, you are the ‘Be perfect’ journallers. Your motto will be probably be: ‘If I’m going to keep a journal, I’m going to do it well.’
And how will this display itself?
Well, you’ll check your facts and annotate. And you won’t be scribbling on your knee on a bus. You’ll have a designated place for journaling and for keeping your journal. You may also be inclined to give up journaling because your journal doesn’t seem to you to be ‘perfect’.
Take action to avoid this last pitfall by accepting certain general principles:
• Be realistic about how accurate and beautifully presented a journal needs to be.
• Ask yourself whether a spelling mistake matters more than what you’ve written about.
• Tell yourself mistakes are not serious, content is all.
• And review your journaling entries as you do them.
Some people go for the Q&A approach developing a system of personal performance questions to ensure clarity and balance. Your purpose in keeping your journal may be to maintain a record of your feelings, keep an account of the minutiae of your daily life, produce a progress report on your personal development, whatever. And, if you are a perfectionist, you can frame a number of questions to produce what you want from each entry.
If for example your goal for journaling is to produce a progress report on your career, your list of questions may include:
• Has your working day contributed to your progress? In what ways?
• Did you enjoy your day? If not, why not?
• Did you receive a reward for good performance – Money? Praise? Promotion? How do you feel about this?
• Are your relationships good at work? How could you improve the bad ones? Do you want to? What’s good about the good ones? Do you want more of these?
• Have you noticed any areas where you’d like further training? How can you access this? What is the first step? When will you take it?
• How could your employer improve your working life?
• Does the company share your values?
This is a detailed clutch of questions. You may prefer something broader and freer such as:
• Am I any further forward today towards my promotion?
• If not, why not?
• What am I going to do about it?
• If nothing, why nothing?
You may on the other hand prefer ‘free-writing’. At the other end of the quality control continuum is the option of writing without pause for ten minutes each day and checking in at regular periods – weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly - to find out what your sub-conscious contributes to the burning issues of your life. But your favoured quality control measures will always, always depend on your personal style.
©Lizzie Gates 2009
Showing posts with label journals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label journals. Show all posts
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
Wednesday, 14 October 2009
New Year, new notebook
On January 1st, some people start off the year with a bright new notebook. “This is the year I’m going to write my journal every day,” they think. Then, around January 6th – and, co-incidentally, Epiphany – they find their journaling has ground to a halt. There’s too much to do. They have too little to say. Or so they think.
Here are some tips for this New Year - starting this very day - techniques to get you started and keep you going:
1) The 1-sentence journal. Journal entries don’t have to be literary and can be as detailed or as brief as you like. If you hit a low period, when you might give up, try just a single sentence each day for a week. Longer if necessary. Then see if you can resist the urge to write more.
2) List-making This is a writing form that anyone can manage. Listing cuts to the heart of the matter, changing your thoughts from muddle to order in a matter of moments. At first, your thinking may resemble a flock of sheep on a mountainside – obscured by mist or highlighted by sunshine but with one or other of its members constantly on the move. But, listing is a way of being able to herd thoughts. It’s the starting point of organisation corralling related information under sub-headings. And the nature of lists can range from the practical – such as food journals for dieters – to the metaphysical. On January 1st , for example, in a training needs’ identification exercise, you may list together those qualities and attributes you have away from a little herd of those qualities and attributes you would like to have.
3) Free-writing This will flag up the cause of your difficulties. When you first wake, tap into your sub-conscious and identify the patterns that underlie your thinking by writing non-stop for five minutes. Writing down your dreams has the same function although you may be diverted by a narrative form while you attempt this..
4) A poem a day In times of emotional crisis, writing a poem - in free verse -will take the edge off disabling emotion and help you make sense of it.
5) The first word in your head. Write down the first word in your head and then ask, where next?
6) Dialogues. Use your journal to have imaginary chats with people, work, events, society, dreams, emotions, feelings, body parts, or blockages. This classic journaling technique gives you the opportunity for a conversation good to have but rarely held.
7) Tell stories. Find inspiration for your journalling – from the people in your life, your experiences and overheard conversations. You can write these as a straightforward account or fictionalise them into a story without end as daily or weekly instalments.
As a writer, through journaling, you are practising your craft and will inevitably improve your skills. But, as you see, your journal could also be the counsellor in your pocket – as journalling helps you become someone who knows what’s valuable in your life. At the same time, you’ll be able to cull the valueless. And think much more clearly.
Here are some tips for this New Year - starting this very day - techniques to get you started and keep you going:
1) The 1-sentence journal. Journal entries don’t have to be literary and can be as detailed or as brief as you like. If you hit a low period, when you might give up, try just a single sentence each day for a week. Longer if necessary. Then see if you can resist the urge to write more.
2) List-making This is a writing form that anyone can manage. Listing cuts to the heart of the matter, changing your thoughts from muddle to order in a matter of moments. At first, your thinking may resemble a flock of sheep on a mountainside – obscured by mist or highlighted by sunshine but with one or other of its members constantly on the move. But, listing is a way of being able to herd thoughts. It’s the starting point of organisation corralling related information under sub-headings. And the nature of lists can range from the practical – such as food journals for dieters – to the metaphysical. On January 1st , for example, in a training needs’ identification exercise, you may list together those qualities and attributes you have away from a little herd of those qualities and attributes you would like to have.
3) Free-writing This will flag up the cause of your difficulties. When you first wake, tap into your sub-conscious and identify the patterns that underlie your thinking by writing non-stop for five minutes. Writing down your dreams has the same function although you may be diverted by a narrative form while you attempt this..
4) A poem a day In times of emotional crisis, writing a poem - in free verse -will take the edge off disabling emotion and help you make sense of it.
5) The first word in your head. Write down the first word in your head and then ask, where next?
6) Dialogues. Use your journal to have imaginary chats with people, work, events, society, dreams, emotions, feelings, body parts, or blockages. This classic journaling technique gives you the opportunity for a conversation good to have but rarely held.
7) Tell stories. Find inspiration for your journalling – from the people in your life, your experiences and overheard conversations. You can write these as a straightforward account or fictionalise them into a story without end as daily or weekly instalments.
As a writer, through journaling, you are practising your craft and will inevitably improve your skills. But, as you see, your journal could also be the counsellor in your pocket – as journalling helps you become someone who knows what’s valuable in your life. At the same time, you’ll be able to cull the valueless. And think much more clearly.
Monday, 7 September 2009
What to do with your journal
What you do with your journal depends on many things.
You may be using the materials for personal development - to understand yourself better through the objective recording of your story.
However, your journal is also a unique resource for your fiction writing. In it, you can record stories drawn from life – your own and other people’s. You can write down conversations overheard on public transport, in the pub, at the doctor’s surgery. And you can turn all this into a story without end. You can write this in daily or weekly instalments until it grows into a volume of anecdotes with its own themes and enhance these with images, cartoons, objects such as discarded tablet packets or sea-shells – whatever.
From either of these kinds of journal you have ideas and notes which will make your fiction and your autobiographical non-fiction authentic. And this will mark out your writing’s unique selling point - its individual ‘voice’.
When you come to review your materials, of course, several issues become significant.
OK. So you’ve had an interesting life; your journals are waiting to be mined for information; your family and friends are clamouring for ‘the book’. What next?
Autobiography is now an industry and – as with any other kind of writing – certain rules underpin success. Even if you are thinking of self-publication, consideration of these can make all the difference between a book people want to read and a book that stands neglected on the shelf.
Your reader – the audience – is as ever in pole position. Who are you telling your story to? This will dictate what words and expressions you employ. Would you, for example, want your mother to read what you write for your friends?
And then, there’s the thorny issue of what you include and what you leave out.
The trick lies in the vexed issue of goal-setting. A recent visit to a writers’ group left me convinced that not one among the seven people who read their ‘stuff’ out had the least idea about goal-setting, either for their literary career or for their individual project. Planning for this group was anathema and so was review. People wrote what came into their heads with no idea of where to go with it. The resulting prose excerpts were shapeless, unstructured and cliché-ridden. Their material was raw beyond belief - although not irretrievable. And their goal, if any, was to enjoy their writing. So – in that sense – they had achieved one goal. But they still hoped that publication would happen.
You may be using the materials for personal development - to understand yourself better through the objective recording of your story.
However, your journal is also a unique resource for your fiction writing. In it, you can record stories drawn from life – your own and other people’s. You can write down conversations overheard on public transport, in the pub, at the doctor’s surgery. And you can turn all this into a story without end. You can write this in daily or weekly instalments until it grows into a volume of anecdotes with its own themes and enhance these with images, cartoons, objects such as discarded tablet packets or sea-shells – whatever.
From either of these kinds of journal you have ideas and notes which will make your fiction and your autobiographical non-fiction authentic. And this will mark out your writing’s unique selling point - its individual ‘voice’.
When you come to review your materials, of course, several issues become significant.
OK. So you’ve had an interesting life; your journals are waiting to be mined for information; your family and friends are clamouring for ‘the book’. What next?
Autobiography is now an industry and – as with any other kind of writing – certain rules underpin success. Even if you are thinking of self-publication, consideration of these can make all the difference between a book people want to read and a book that stands neglected on the shelf.
Your reader – the audience – is as ever in pole position. Who are you telling your story to? This will dictate what words and expressions you employ. Would you, for example, want your mother to read what you write for your friends?
And then, there’s the thorny issue of what you include and what you leave out.
The trick lies in the vexed issue of goal-setting. A recent visit to a writers’ group left me convinced that not one among the seven people who read their ‘stuff’ out had the least idea about goal-setting, either for their literary career or for their individual project. Planning for this group was anathema and so was review. People wrote what came into their heads with no idea of where to go with it. The resulting prose excerpts were shapeless, unstructured and cliché-ridden. Their material was raw beyond belief - although not irretrievable. And their goal, if any, was to enjoy their writing. So – in that sense – they had achieved one goal. But they still hoped that publication would happen.
Saturday, 29 August 2009
Why keep a journal?
For those of us who have been brought up to consider journal-keeping as the preserve of muslin-dressed women with time on their hands, think again. It is not something to be squeezed in between water-colouring and embroidery.
Journalling is a way of listening to yourself. So, in a world constantly exorting you to give your opinion, journalling can be a useful check on what you really think.
Of course, you may like your opinions to be a knee-jerk reaction, a response on the wing. But, if so, are they really your opinions? Are they based on evidence and your own form of expertise? Or are they the half-remembered gobbets of other people’s views. Are they views which you could not defend if challenged? And are they truly what you believe?
If you’re dishonest in your journal, you’re fooling no-one but yourself. In which case, why bother to keep a journal at all? A journal is one place where you can afford to be brutally honest with yourself. Think of the advantages of that!
But someone may read it and make a judgement, you may think. Remember the responsibility of keeping your journal as a ‘safe space’ – away from chance encounters with people you have not permitted to read it – is yours. Totally. You have only yourself to blame if you are careless with its sanctity.
If however you do care for your journal in this way, it rewards you with total confidentiality. It’s like carrying around a counsellor or a coach in your pocket. It has that much power.
For those of us who have been brought up to consider journal-keeping as the preserve of muslin-dressed women with time on their hands, think again. It is not something to be squeezed in between water-colouring and embroidery.
Journalling is a way of listening to yourself. So, in a world constantly exorting you to give your opinion, journalling can be a useful check on what you really think.
Of course, you may like your opinions to be a knee-jerk reaction, a response on the wing. But, if so, are they really your opinions? Are they based on evidence and your own form of expertise? Or are they the half-remembered gobbets of other people’s views. Are they views which you could not defend if challenged? And are they truly what you believe?
If you’re dishonest in your journal, you’re fooling no-one but yourself. In which case, why bother to keep a journal at all? A journal is one place where you can afford to be brutally honest with yourself. Think of the advantages of that!
But someone may read it and make a judgement, you may think. Remember the responsibility of keeping your journal as a ‘safe space’ – away from chance encounters with people you have not permitted to read it – is yours. Totally. You have only yourself to blame if you are careless with its sanctity.
If however you do care for your journal in this way, it rewards you with total confidentiality. It’s like carrying around a counsellor or a coach in your pocket. It has that much power.
Journalling - the route to your inner self
Keeping a journal opens up your inner world with powerful results.
You can, for example, record your dreams on its pages and re-telling dream-stories lifts your waking mood. Breaking your dreams, as the old saying goes. After all, we’ve all woken up – in tears or buoyant with love – with an almost overwhelming desire to tell someone about a dream. At least, if you confide in your dream journal, it won’t tell anyone else. Confidentiality is assured.
But, if patterns of dream imagery recur, your journal may also be warning you of something you need to take seriously but have not yet consciously acknowledged. In this case, your journal will not judge but will help to raise your awareness of some potential danger.
So how – exactly - does form influence the effectiveness of what you write?
Some days, for example, you may want to use your journal to understand – or even to remove – some vivid emotions disturbing your daily life. You may want to hang on to all this emotion or let it go. But, because of the mental energy required, describing it in words is a strong first step towards regaining control of your life.
At this, you may choose to write your journal in the form of a daily poem, exploring the experience through metaphor. Or your journal could become a long-running unsent letter to the person who is generating all this feverish confusion in your life. And – unless you make a conscious decision to share - the person in question need never know. This useful strategy can diffuse bubbling conflicts with your boss. Or keep the lid on a love affair. Or speak to someone who has died leaving you with things unsaid.
You can, for example, record your dreams on its pages and re-telling dream-stories lifts your waking mood. Breaking your dreams, as the old saying goes. After all, we’ve all woken up – in tears or buoyant with love – with an almost overwhelming desire to tell someone about a dream. At least, if you confide in your dream journal, it won’t tell anyone else. Confidentiality is assured.
But, if patterns of dream imagery recur, your journal may also be warning you of something you need to take seriously but have not yet consciously acknowledged. In this case, your journal will not judge but will help to raise your awareness of some potential danger.
So how – exactly - does form influence the effectiveness of what you write?
Some days, for example, you may want to use your journal to understand – or even to remove – some vivid emotions disturbing your daily life. You may want to hang on to all this emotion or let it go. But, because of the mental energy required, describing it in words is a strong first step towards regaining control of your life.
At this, you may choose to write your journal in the form of a daily poem, exploring the experience through metaphor. Or your journal could become a long-running unsent letter to the person who is generating all this feverish confusion in your life. And – unless you make a conscious decision to share - the person in question need never know. This useful strategy can diffuse bubbling conflicts with your boss. Or keep the lid on a love affair. Or speak to someone who has died leaving you with things unsaid.
Journalling for beginners
Communication usually involves someone saying or writing something to someone else and receiving a response. And, as I’m proposing journaling can have a special role in communication, you may well ask ‘Where is this response?’
Keeping a journal must appear to be a very one-sided form of communication. Journals, however, have multiple purposes and can take many forms. And none of these is ultimately incompatible with the concept of communication. You may also find that – ultimately - keeping a journal even enhances your abilities in this area.
Firstly, you can use your journal as a way of finding out what you really think about something. And you may then ‘practice’ conversations there you’ll later have in daily life. About your career, for instance. In the quiet confidential space of your journal, you can work out the pros and cons of the conversation you want to have with your boss about your readiness for promotion.
Personal relationships are common journal material. In your journal, for example, you could find yourself asking why your husband has suddenly taken on responsibility for buying his secretary’s Christmas present – especially as before, Matilda’s talcum powder had always been just an extra on your own Christmas shopping list. You then have a very private opportunity to work out the answer your own question. And prepare for a conversation you know you must have.
Sometimes it helps to know why you’re keeping a journal. As with any other form of writing, start by defining your purpose or purposes clearly. Do you want to dump emotion, organise a programme of self-improvement or create a resource of stories and characters which will fuel your fiction writing?
Once you’ve established your clear intent in writing this journal – again, as with any other form of writing - you can then choose the form best suited to the purpose. If you want to dump emotion, your journal could take the form of a long unsent letter to the person who is generating all this feverish need to ‘splurge and burn’ in you.
But always remember, your journal exists to give meaning to your life. You are the one who will be empowered by keeping it. It is safe and private. And you can choose to change your purpose in keeping it and adopt different forms, whenever you want. After the catharsis of the unsent letter, for example, you may feel calm enough to itemise your calorie intake for the day. Your mood diary will become a food diary.
Keeping a journal must appear to be a very one-sided form of communication. Journals, however, have multiple purposes and can take many forms. And none of these is ultimately incompatible with the concept of communication. You may also find that – ultimately - keeping a journal even enhances your abilities in this area.
Firstly, you can use your journal as a way of finding out what you really think about something. And you may then ‘practice’ conversations there you’ll later have in daily life. About your career, for instance. In the quiet confidential space of your journal, you can work out the pros and cons of the conversation you want to have with your boss about your readiness for promotion.
Personal relationships are common journal material. In your journal, for example, you could find yourself asking why your husband has suddenly taken on responsibility for buying his secretary’s Christmas present – especially as before, Matilda’s talcum powder had always been just an extra on your own Christmas shopping list. You then have a very private opportunity to work out the answer your own question. And prepare for a conversation you know you must have.
Sometimes it helps to know why you’re keeping a journal. As with any other form of writing, start by defining your purpose or purposes clearly. Do you want to dump emotion, organise a programme of self-improvement or create a resource of stories and characters which will fuel your fiction writing?
Once you’ve established your clear intent in writing this journal – again, as with any other form of writing - you can then choose the form best suited to the purpose. If you want to dump emotion, your journal could take the form of a long unsent letter to the person who is generating all this feverish need to ‘splurge and burn’ in you.
But always remember, your journal exists to give meaning to your life. You are the one who will be empowered by keeping it. It is safe and private. And you can choose to change your purpose in keeping it and adopt different forms, whenever you want. After the catharsis of the unsent letter, for example, you may feel calm enough to itemise your calorie intake for the day. Your mood diary will become a food diary.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)