Top 3 Reasons Writers Should Keep Project Journals

A project journal is kept for the purpose of recording thoughts, activities, reflections, anything related to an underway project, from its inception to completion. For writers, their projects could be anything from a novel to a group of poems. As someone who has journaled for over 25 years now, I think keeping a record for every writing project has been one of the most useful activities for my overall writing. No matter what the genre – whether poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction or any other, journaling can be an insightful companion to it.

Here’s why:

1) Intimacy:
For the duration of writing a poem, I record my thoughts, brainstorms, fears, bottlenecks, its positives and negatives in a journal. This allows me to develop intimacy with my work. I am able to explore the poem in all its emotional and technical complexity away from the pressure of the drafts I am putting it through. Also, this kind of deep engagement with it yields a finer understanding and cognition of patterns that are useful in future writing projects: I find ways I’ve resolved problems in earlier journals, what has been successful, what hasn’t. Often, a project journal can lead to new ideas which give rise to completely new work.

2) Practice:
Keeping a project journal is great for exercising the writing muscle and getting optimum performance from it. The discovery and ease of expression, of voice, engenders comfort and familiarity with the written word. For me, keeping a project journal brings me to a deeper appreciation of the language in my work. I can build and explore word choices. Go off on tangents and follow different idea threads without worrying about keeping to themes or being consistent or structured.

3) Chaos:
A journal allows for creative chaos. For brutal honesty with yourself about your work. It is where you can be as bold as you please and release every little inhibition you may harbor about your writing. It is liberating and provides an alternative to the exalted writing standards we hold ourselves to. It allows us to let our hair down and come to our work with a sense of play, even disorganization.

I hope this contributes to your writing. Until next week!

P.S.: I’ll be blogging my experience of the 2014 Yale Writers’ Conference in 3 parts over the next 3 weeks. Stay tuned! 🙂