A Journal Does Not an Essay Make

On writing: the journal and your expectations.

Read the above blog post to know how to write a journal and how NOT to write a college essay. The most important thing I tell my students is that there are different kinds of writing and writing in a journal is far different from writing to inform. However, journaling is good practice for writing in general as the blog author says.

I don’t believe there are any rules that apply to journal keeping. You hear about writing so many words a day, etc.  However, keeping a journal or diary is a highly personal endeavor and each person should use a journal however and whenever they wish. Perhaps the one prerequisite I would give is to read, not write. The more one reads, the more one is inclined to write about what one reads. For me, it’s second nature to do so.

This is also different from blogging or keeping a diary. A diary is a recollection of daily events; a recording of what transpired during a day or a week. A journal is more personal and explores emotions along with dreams and/or events. It provides an emotional record. Blogging can be a bit of both and as of yet, no one has dared to say there are blogging rules, except for those who blog to make money or for business. No one really keeps a diary or journal to make money. Examples of a diary AND journal are Samuel Pepys‘ and James Boswell‘s journal. The most famous female journal-er is Anais Nin.

A composition or essay on the other hand is a different creature entirely. Many students have no idea where to start an essay and the biggest complaint I hear from them is that they have writer’s block. There is a good way to get around this: Start in the middle with the idea you think you are toying with. You can start with several ideas you are toying with, but the key is to get something down on paper. I have never started writing essays at the beginning of them. When I wrote in college I started with the idea that I was considering and wrote around it. If you are writing about literature, you usually have a brilliant idea about what you’ve just read and you are then thinking about what others have said about what you’ve just read. Well, get those thoughts down on paper immediately. It helps focus your thoughts and it lets you see it visually so that a construction can take place. It is like building a house. You start with the basic foundation, not the exterior. Think of the title and introduction as ‘window dressing’ not the foundation of the building.

In the old days of composition writing classes, teachers taught us to use index cards to take notes, but today taking notes about a subject directly into your essay in a Word processing document allows you to move the ideas around on virtual ‘paper’ so that a once you have a good, solid thesis (main idea to explore) you can go back later and construct a beginning and an ending, getting rid of bits and pieces that don’t fit later. But, again, don’t write like a journal keeper in college composition. And don’t think composition rules apply for a journal. They don’t.

In your journal, as the blog author advises–write your ideas, your dreams, your imagination, your goals, your thoughts, your anger, your passion, your love, your fears….write simply…yourself.

Related articles

• The Joys of Journal Writing (curtissannmatlock.wordpress.com)
• Personal Journal (ixsaints.wordpress.com)
• Journal Writing – “What do you write in your journal”? (writingthroughmyeyes.wordpress.com)
• That’ll Teach Me (the-view-outside.com)
• Essays… My Battle So Far (harlequindays.wordpress.com)
• Writing to Meet the Demands of the University (plangereinternship.wordpress.com)