How To Journal

For a long time after I bought it, one little book sat in my handbag ready to be whipped out at any given solitary opportunity, most notably in my favourite corner of my favourite Starbucks. My copy of How To Make A Journal of Your Life by Dan Price is pretty much in pieces, with pages flying off everywhere, unable to stick together in any coherent shape. This is good testament to what a seminal book it has been for my development as a writer, even though nobody has read any of the thoughts that Dan's book has sparked.

Journaling has always been a difficult one for me. When I was much younger I thought that there was no point in writing if nobody was reading me (doesn't seem to hold much water any more that one) but then my thinking process refined itself into seeing journaling as a painful exercise that I really didn't want to do. 

Later still, Danny Gregory entered my life, and as I told you here, I found his principle of journaling aimed at blunting our pains, not reflecting them, revolutionary. It is through Danny that I discovered Dan (I hope you're following...) and within his little book I found a similar message:

'While it is true that many and most personal diaries are kept hidden under bedroom pillows, filled with any amount of secret sufferings, I'd like to propose you simply use any odd spiral notebook for those exercises. This new little empty book you now hold in your hands deserves better than that. Perhaps instead of focusing on negative things, it could have only your enlightened thoughts.

This is all about breaking old boring habits, you see. This is about rejoicement! Noticing that small gesture, or the neatest thing you saw that day. Do you realize you could make notes about absolutely anything? Does this excite you?'

That's it dear reader, ponder the beauty of possibility for a minute and stop worrying about defacing a glorious new journal with your whining. Yes, defacing a journal. If you're one of those people who have a thing for stationery, you may find that you horde delightful journals but are too self-conscious even to crack them open so that they lie flat. This is a very common ailment of us Stationery Porn Addicts and one that Dan Price (and yes, Danny Gregory too) help you to get over. For many years I too used to buy notebooks and diaries, colour-code them, and stack them in pleasing arrangements as if awaiting a Martha Stewart Living photoshoot. Then I left them untouched, their virgin pages still promising artistic adventures years down the line, but it was only the depressing light tanning of the paper that was marking the passing of each journal's unlived life. 

Now I look at my well-lived and very much enjoyed copy of How To Make A Journal of Your Life and I love the way in which the pages tell our story together, me and the book, their folds and cracks reminding me of that time when I dropped it under the table, or when I found it crushed by the laptop I had slid into the bag. And wouldn't it be wonderful if this were the condition of my journal? As Dan says:

'Has your intuition been telling you to get an empty journal and begin filling it with all the interesting events of your life? Well, time is racing by. All those neat things that happened just last week have quickly become your past. Lost in all that white noise of our fast paced, modern lifestyles.

So why not begin a journal today? Find a nice empty book and start what could be the most fascinating and fulfilling activity of your entire life.' 

I am always careful when I try and introduce people to Dan's work because the second they realise he is so great at drawing they come up with that old, 'But I can't draw!' Well, I am telling you, YES YOU CAN. I am saying, 'Yes you can draw' and people hear, 'Yes, you can be the next Michelangelo'. But that's not what I (nor Dan nor Danny), mean. What we mean is this, again from Dan's book:

'Because it is true we all really can draw. [...] each one of us has a unique signature that directly translates to any drawings we make. It's these differences that make our own art interesting. If we had all gone on to be "great" artists with that OLD mentality, then each and everyone of us would be producing "perfect" photo-like sketches. We'd all be NORMAN ROCKWELL. Yikes.'

Maybe you think that your life ain't worth recording because your surroundings aren't anything special or you cannot write like Samuel Pepys or you only shoot with a phone or your husband isn't good looking enough to draw or whatever other resistance you're trying to sink into. But I am here telling you that your life is worth recording because it's yours. 

And one last plug for Dan whom I love very much: find more about him and his excellent work at the Moonlight Chronicles. Try it. It's life-changing stuff. 

Comments

[linda dacey]

Great post and entralling blog; need to visit often to absorb properly! I am a visual artist/antique dealer living in Northern France and I KNOW we can all draw and write, only perhaps not as we would like too. I have never been great at sketchbooks or journals and prefer to use loose sheets; still a pristine white page is intimidating. So I buy old books, whitewash the pages and the pressure to be perfect is off. Recently I have started a blog, (please pop by), which is I guess a form of journal... Be back soon thanks Linda

[Amelia]

I love journalling more and more now as it's so virulently spoken about on the net!

I want to get this book as well . . . .

Thanks for your lovely comment on my blog - motherhood is tough, in whatever guise! but we soldier on into the unknown learning along the way!

Thanks for your support!

Amelia.xx

[e.lee]

I can relate to not wanting to deface pristine notebooks with 'whining' hahahah
So I fill them with ranting instead- no just joking
A beautiful and inspirational post