How Can A Writer's Journal Help Us On Our Writing Journey?

24 Oct

As writers, ideas can come to us from anywhere: a photo, a conversation we overhear on the bus, a film. These fleeting moments can provide incredible sparks of creativity. Ideas are born when we sit on a train or go on a walk, as we move through our days our thoughts are working on our stories but be careful, these strikes of genius can be easily forgotten – unless you write them down – and that’s where the power of a writer’s journal comes in.

But what exactly is a writer’s journal and what can we gain from keeping one? What benefits can it have for our writing? Let’s dive in and explore how a writer’s journal can help us on our writing journey…

What Is A Writer’s Journal?

A writer’s journal is a hotbed for creativity. It’s a record of your ideas, inspiration, and creativity. Whether it’s a physical journal or notes on your phone, your writer’s journal is a go-to resource for your creativity. It’s always there for you to draw from and refer to. It is simply a place to capture your inspiration and ideas. But it’s also so much more than that.

It’s one of the best ways to record your research and to help you with your idea generation. It can motivate you, remind you of your core ideas and it can even provide encouragement.

Why Is A Writer’s Journal Important?

Keeping a writer’s journal can be a valuable practice in several ways:

There Are No Rules – When it comes to your writer’s journal, there are no rules. A writer’s journal can be whatever you want it to be. You can have fun with it, and tailor it completely to you. There are no set rules for the format a writer’s journal should come in, or what genre you should keep notes about. It’s all about capturing your creativity and ideas in a way that works for you.

A quick reference guide or safe place – Part of the beauty of a writer’s journal is that it keeps all your ideas in one place. You don’t need to worry about forgetting that line of poetry or the character name you’ve created.
A writer’s journal is a record of your creative thoughts and inspiration – It’s a concrete collection of your ideas which you can return to over and over again. This also means that you have ideas you can turn to on those days when you’re feeling stuck or struggling to get into that writing mindset. Your writer’s journal is like your writing sidekick.

How Do You Start A Writer’s Journal?

We would recommend one Writer’s Journal per writing project (or book that you're working) on because it gives you this unique place to store all of the ideas and thoughts that you have about this novel, (or work in progress) and this is going to help you if you have writer's block, or if you don't know where to start because you're going to open up this journal and you're just going to be filled with ideas.

It’s also a great excuse for you to buy a new notebook!

What Do You Write In Your Writer’s Journal?

Whether you enjoy doodling, creating lists or brainstorms, you can utilise your favourite method of notetaking for your writer’s journal.

Part of the beauty of a writer’s journal is that there is no right or wrong way to do it. Take some time to experiment and test out what works best for you.

At Derbyshire Writing School, we’ve put together some suggestions for how you could get started with your writer’s journal. Take a look…

Writing Sprints

Setting yourself a timer to write to can be a powerful way to focus your mind on getting some thoughts and ideas down on the page.

For more information on writing sprints, such as why we should use them and how to plan one, check out our podcast episode ‘The Writer’s Toolbox – The Tool of Writing Sprints.’

Use Writing Prompts

From creative questions to inspire you to write about your life, to our unique Prompt Box, at Derbyshire Writing School, we believe that writing prompts can be a great tool for writers. They can help release our creativity and inspire new ideas.

Writing prompts can come in any form, from photos to a sentence. Experiment with different kinds of prompts and see what ideas emerge.

Be Inspired By Books

Books of all styles and genres can provide us with inspiration to collect in our writer’s journals. Anything from a particular piece of advice from a non-fiction book to a character’s line of dialogue can ignite our creativity. Try copying out lines of text that inspire you, or use a quote as a writing prompt.

Check out our ‘5 Books To Inspire You To Keep Going’ blog post for some recommendations of books to explore.

Remember: Always make it clear where any direct quotes have come from. We are not encouraging any plagiarism.

Other ideas

You might even write down dialogue – maybe a character is speaking to you while you're cooking dinner, and you just need to jot that line down. Then imagine, a couple of weeks later, you read a really interesting newspaper article and you cut it out and stuck it in your writer's journal. And when you matched together the newspaper article with the line of dialogue, you realised, hang on a minute, there's something here. There is an interesting link I could make here, a unique twist to my story that I can add.

It's the same thing with overhearing people talking in a coffee shop maybe and jotting down parts of their conversation, or even if different themes come to you and you realise you want to include that in your novel - write it down. Anything that inspires you, anything that makes you want to write, jot it down in this writer's journal.

You could cut out bits from a magazine. You could even draw your characters. Whatever is going to inspire you – put it in your writer's journal. If you have a day where you just feel like you can't write spending time with your writer's journal, going through ideas that are going to kickstart you and help you write, or if not, it's still time well spent.

You can read a little bit more about how Ryan Holiday creates his commonplace book (a similar idea to a writer’s Journal or how Austin Kleon, creates his logbook – looking at the writer's journal in a slightly different way, a bit more of a diary, but that could be something that's more suited to you.

Next steps – How A Writer’s Journal Can Help You Write A Book

When it comes to helping you finish your book, your writer’s journal can be a really useful tool. You can refer to and expand upon all your ideas, from character descriptions to plot points.

You can embrace creative play and explore different forms and genres in your writing. The possibilities are endless.

Let your writer’s journal be the foundation for your creative writing. All the ideas are contained within it, now you can focus on expanding on them.

It's going to help you see how ideas can be matched together. It's going to help your novel (or writing project) become authentic as well, because it's going to be grounded in things that you love and things that have given you passion or inspired you. It's just going to help you learn how ideas can mesh and how research can help you generate even more ideas and material to include in your novel.

We used to think if we spent time writing something that wasn't linked to a novel or a work in progress that it was a complete waste of time. Have you ever felt like that too? As if it’s a waste of time responding to prompts or working on different elements of writing if it wasn't going to add to the word count of a novel. But eventually, if you take time to step back, you’ll see how no writing is wasted.

If we learn to write by writing, anything we write is going to help move us forward. Although it may take slightly longer to get your novel finished, it's going to be better in the end if you have spent the time researching, responding to different prompts or whatever it is that helps you write your book.

The Power Of A Writer’s Journal

No matter what form your writer’s journal takes, you’ll have endless creative possibilities to turn to with your writing.

Even if it’s just 10 minutes 3 days a week, when you dedicate this small amount of time to your writer’s journal, when you make it a regular part of your routine, those pages will soon start to fill up with your creative thoughts and ideas.

If you decide to experiment with keeping a writer’s journal, we would love to hear how you get on! You can get in touch with us at info@derbyshirewritingschool.com.