Journal Writing Best Practices

[SilentDawning]

As I am renewing (again) my commitment to journal writing, I thought I would ask everyone what best practices they have regarding their journal.

I have a few to start off, in case anyone is interested in this thread.

1. Make sure each entry has a topical name so you can go back over it and read parts you find interesting in the future. Don’t just put a date on it as it means reading each entry to review something you wrote previously.

2. Consider keeping a private journal and a public journal. The private journal is for all the stuff you’d rather no one saw, while the public journal is like an autobiography. Sanitized for persons unknown who may read it after you die. I have always felt there is a need for something you can give to everyone after you die (leaving a kind of legacy) and a place where you can write your deepest, darkest thoughts.

Any other thoughts about journal writing best practices?

[mom3]

I scribble, journal, vent – everywhere. It’s soul healing for me. Enjoy.

[Roy]

I like the idea of having two separate journals. I recently had occasion to peruse my mission journals and there are some passages that I would prefer not to have in there.

As for the topic idea, do you just write about how you feel about the topic at a particular point in time or do you add to and revise the topic periodically. I am thinking that a public journal organized by topics could be a blog.

[SilentDawning]

I put the topic as a heading…something like this (entry is just made up here, not real):

University Achievement Award

Today I received a university achievement award for outstanding performance by an employee. They gave me an award of $2500 and recognition at our annual employee meeting with the senior leaders. All that hard work I did on the Gadfly, Rose, and Curriculum projects paid off.

[SilentDawning]

mom3 wrote:

I scribble, journal, vent – everywhere. It’s soul healing for me. Enjoy.

There were some guys who showed up on Shark Tank with a journal idea. It would be hosted on a remote server. They quoted a whole bunch of research that shows journal writing has many benefits emotionally. I am now using The Journal 8, which has a tree-like format. In one left side window are all your journal entry topics where you can put the heading. Then, when you click on the title of the entry, the right hand window brings up all your text. It has different tools for inserting dates, files, images, tags so you can search the journal for specific entries at another time, and more.

I love it — it’s the best journal writing software I have ever used because the others — Keep and Share, and The Daily Journal either were too featureless, or they kept jacking up the price of using their services.

[Old-Timer]

I have never been good at traditional journaling.

I have been much better at simply recording my thoughts – mostly on my personal blog and here.

[SilentDawning]

Old-Timer wrote:

I have never been good at traditional journaling.

I have been much better at simply recording my thoughts – mostly on my personal blog and here.

I often take comments I wrote here, or that others wrote, and put them in my journal with a cut and paste. Sometimes context is necessary before I do so. What concerns me about using sites like these or even blogs is the lack of permanence. At least with software on my own machine I can backup, and even print and bind.

[Author]

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