Journal Writing Quotes

Only the broken heart has the ghost of a chance to grieve, to forgive, to long, to transform.
Christina Baldwin, author of Life's Companion, Journal Writing as a Spiritual Practice, 1990. Used with author's permission ~ Judith-Victoria Douglas

And instead of dying Immediately after they shot him, he would go on to survive several days solely because of the cold that January. Maybe that's why we are drawn to those who posses the coldest of hearts ... In effort to survive. ~ Bethany Brookbank

There are certain things that make me relax, like writing my journal. That's the only time that I'm relaxing. It's the only time I really get to examine myself. ~ Jessica Simpson

If you listen to your body and your intuition, they'll guide you well. There are countless ways to develop listening skills. Some helpful and classic practices include: dancing and drumming, sitting and walking meditations, t'ai chi or chi kung, painting or journal writing. It's important to find what works for you, and even the time of day or night that works best for you. Whatever you choose, the commonality is that they all offer an opportunity for quieting the mind, and slowing down enough to be
present and able to listen for inner guidance - and guidance from the plants themselves. ~ Robin Rose Bennett

Often as writers, we are surprised by what we learn about ourselves. It runs counter to what we've thought about who we are. But it is closer to the truth. ~ Rob Bignell, Editor

I write journals and would recommend journal writing to anyone who wishes to pursue a writing career. You learn a lot. You also remember a lot ... and memory is important. ~ Judy Collins

Write your dreams in journal,note book, card or on a cork. When you pen down your dreams, an a inner strength and divine power is activated for your to work towards the fulfillment of your dreams. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I started out of course with Hemingway when I learned how to write. Until I realized Hemingway doesn't have a sense of humor. He never has anything funny in his stories. ~ Elmore Leonard

I was an angst-y journal writing kid. ~ Justin Halpern

I started writing and photographing for different publications and finally ended up being the correspondent in South Asia, for the Geneva-based Journal de Geneve, which at one time used to be one of the best international newspapers in Europe. ~ Francois Gautier

Our dreams and stories may contain implicit aspects of our lives even without our awareness. In fact, storytelling may be a primary way in which we can linguistically communicate to others - as well as to ourselves - the sometimes hidden contents of our implicitly remembering minds. Stories make available perspectives on the emotional themes of our implicit memory that may otherwise be consciously unavailable to us. This may be one reason why journal writing and intimate communication with others, which are so often narrative processes, have such powerful organizing effects on the mind: They allow us to modulate our emotions and make sense of the world. ~ Daniel J. Siegel

I have a thing - I call it magic - but I feel like I can write stuff down in the middle of the night and wake up and it happens. I write what I want in my journal. ~ Ester Dean

For years I've advocated keeping a gratitude journal, writing down five things every day that brought pleasure and gratefulness. ~ Oprah Winfrey

Blogging is different from both journal-writing and writing for print. It's more fun than either of those. The freedom to write whatever I want and the unmediated connection with readers are the payoff. ~ Kate Christensen

Through journal writing, you'll discover how to get more benefit from everything that you've experienced. In the process, you'll discover that what you've learned from being a survivor has enriched your life beyond anything you've ever imagined. ~ Frank McCourt

My friend is composing an epic in Byronic stanzas entitled "True History of Autua, Last Moriori" & interrupts my journal writing to ask what rhymes with what: - "Streams of blood"? "Themes of mud"? "Robin Hood"? ~ David Mitchell

Journal writing gives us insights into who we are, who we were, and who we can become. ~ Sandra Marinella

I read less of everything now. With only fond memories of others' work, it will be interesting to give my own journal writing a try now. ~ Jonathan Carroll

I never pretend to be so superior a being as to be above having and indulging a hobby horse [her journal writing], and while I keep mine within due bounds and limits, nobody, I flatter myself, would wish to deprive me of the poor animal: to be sure, he is not formed for labour, and is rather lame and weak, but then the dear creature is faithful, constant, and loving, and though he sometimes prances, would not kick anyone into the mire, or hurt a single soul for the world
and I would not part with him for one who could win the greatest prize that ever was won at any races. ~ Fanny Burney

Until you begin to write, then you will see the beauty of writing. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Painting for process is the visual equivalent of journal writing, done not for the sake of being seen or published, but purely for the telling itself. ~ Michele Cassou

Keeping a journal: The short entries are often as dry as instant tea. Writing them down is like pouring hot water over them to release their aroma. ~ Ernst Junger

And so, here is Rapa's book, my tribute to her, my one true friend, my love. ~ Poile Sengupta

That IS what journal writing is all about - showing ourselves to God. ~ Frank McCourt

How Journal Writing Helps

Because of your social anxiety, you may be so afraid that any opinions you have are wrong that you remain neutral on most subjects. Or, you might feel like a chameleon who changes opinions depending on the situation. Not expressing your opinions can make you feel empty and unsure of what you really believe. Writing your thoughts and feelings in a journal can help you figure out your likes and dislikes, your opinions on tough issues, and what you stand for. Once you have your true beliefs down on paper, they will seem more concrete and you will be able to remember them during social situations.
Although you probably are aware of what causes you the most anxiety, you also may have worries that are more difficult to identify. People often use various mental tricks to bury problems that are painful or difficult. As you write in your journal, you will become more aware of hidden fears and worries. Once they are brought into the open, you can begin to cope with them more effectively.
Writing about events also makes it easier to be objective. While a belief, such as "Everyone thinks I'm stupid," may cross your mind unconsciously, writing it down makes you realize how false and exaggerated it is. Once you see how maladaptive some of your thoughts are, it is easier to change them.
In addition, a journal is valuable whenever you feel discouraged. Reviewing past entries will remind you how much you have improved over time. This insight ~ Heather Moehn

Journaling Tips

-Try to write every day. Set aside a special time--perhaps right before you go to bed--to reflect on what happened during that day. Writing things down soon after they happen will help you to be honest and objective. If you wait, you may not remember the details as well, and maladaptive thinking patterns may cloud your interpretations.

-Record the date and time for every entry. Also, give each entry a title that reflects what you wrote about. This will help when you search for old entries about a particular day or topic.

-Don't worry about spelling, grammar, and punctuation, or organization. Being a perfectionist will lead to frustration. You aren't going to be graded on your journal--just write whatever comes to mind.

-Leave blank space for future comments. Reflecting on entries weeks, months, or even years after you wrote them will help you record your progress.

-Keep the journal in a safe place. Journal writing is most effective when you are completely honest. This may be hard if you are afraid your parents or siblings might read it. ~ Heather Moehn

Possible Problems with Journal Writing
Be careful not to get too involved with your journal. In many published journals, writers such as Anais Nin worried that they found writing in a journal so satisfying that they were trapped into spending their lives writing about events, rather than living them. Don't let writing about feelings replace speaking with others. Journal writing should be a tool to help you become more confident, not a crutch that increases your isolation. If you find yourself becoming too dependent on your journal, take a break from writing for a week or two. ~ Heather Moehn

Journal writing is a voyage to the interior. ~ Christina Baldwin

By beginning a diary, I was already conceding that life would be more bearable if I looked at it as an adventure and a tale. I was telling myself the story of a life, and this transmutes into an adventure the things which can shatter you. ~ Anais Nin

Books are portals for the imagination, whether one is reading or writing, and unless one is keeping a private journal, writing something that no one is likely to read is like trying to have a conversation when you're all alone. Readers extend and enhance the writer's created work, and they deepen the colors of it with their own imagination and life experiences. In a sense, there's a revision every time one's words are read by someone else, just as surely as there is whenever the writer edits. Nothing is finished or completely dead until both sides quit and it's no longer a part of anyone's thoughts. So it seems almost natural that a lifelong avid reader occasionally wants to construct a mindscape from scratch after wandering happily in those constructed by others. If writing is a collaborative communication between author and reader, then surely there's a time and a place other than writing reviews for readers to 'speak' in the human literary conversation. ~ P.J. O'Brien

Henry's recollections of the past, in contrast to Proust, are done while in movement. He may remember his first wife while making love to a whore, or he may remember his very first love while walking the streets, traveling to see a friend; and life does not stop while he remembers. Analysis in movement. No static vivisection. Henry's daily and continuous flow of life, his sexual activity, his talks with everyone, his cafe life, his conversations with people in the street, which I once considered an interruption to writing, I now believe to be a quality which distinguishes him from other writers. He never writes in cold blood: he is always writing in white heat.
It is what I do with the journal, carrying it everywhere, writing on cafe tables while waiting for a friend, on the train, on the bus, in waiting rooms at the station, while my hair is washed, at the Sorbonne when the lectures get tedious, on journeys, trips, almost while people are talking.
It is while cooking, gardening, walking, or love-making that I remember my childhood, and not while reading Freud's 'Preface to a Little Girl's Journal. ~ Anais Nin

Journal Writing

Keeping a journal is an extremely valuable practice. Right now, your mind may be racing with anxious thoughts and worries. Writing them down helps you sort through your problems and come to a deeper understanding of the issues in your life.
The benefits of journal writing may be more than just psychological. Dr. James Pennebaker, a researcher in Texas, discovered that when people write about difficult experiences for twenty minutes at a time over a period of three to four days, their immune system functioning increases. This indicates that the simple act of writing about emotions has a direct impact on your body's ability to withstand stress and fight infection and disease. ~ Heather Moehn

[writing to Stirling in 1740]
... an unlucky accident happened to some of the French mathematicians in Peru. It seems that they were shewing French gallantry to the natives' wives, who have murdered their servants destroyed their instruments and burnt their papers, the Gentlemen escaping narrowly themselves. What an ugly article this will make in a journal. ~ Colin Maclaurin

Writing journal is for those people who find no interest in living a life of victimhood and limited personal freedom. ~ Deepak Burfiwala

I don't know of any American playwrights who earn the bulk of their living writing plays. Many of the older ones teach, while a growing number of younger ones write for series television. ~ Terry Teachout

Say it new or say it straight. ~ Sol Stein

I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker. ~ Gwendolyn Brooks

Whatever I've worked on, I've always tried to make my writing personal. I think that's what makes my books somewhat different from what other scientists are doing. You have to tie concepts into everyday life, or they just won't be interesting for readers. ~ Leonard Mlodinow

I love to read. But I loved to read a lot longer than I started to love writing. ~ Katherine Paterson

One key to the distinction between mystery and suspense writing involves the relative positions of hero and reader. In the ideal mystery novel, the readers is two steps behind the detective ... The ideal suspense reader, on the other hand, is two steps ahead of the hero. ~ Carolyn Wheat

It is an error to divide people into the living and the dead: there are people who are dead-alive, and people who are alive-alive. The dead-alive also write, walk, speak, act. But they make no mistakes; only machines make no mistakes, and they produce only dead things. The alive-alive are constantly in error, in search, in questions, in torment. ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

I didn't start writing so that I could more deeply know myself. I was bored of myself, my life, my childhood, my hometown. I started writing as a way to know others, to get away from myself. ~ Julianna Baggott

That folk music led to learning to play, and making things up led to what turns out to be the most lucrative part of the music business - writing, because you get paid every time that song gets played. ~ Jackson Browne

When the writing is good, a book becomes a mirror. The reader will see an uncanny familiarity and respond accordingly. ~ Jen Knox

My writing routine is: get son off to school and sit down at 8 A.M. I read what I wrote the day before, and then write longhand, into a notebook. I prefer paper and pen because it feels closer to my brain. ~ Tracy Chevalier

As I repeatedly went forth with him and began to understand the ignorance and contradictions and language difficulties with which he contended, and the doubtful sources of his information and the seemingly bottomless history and darkness out of which the dishes of New York emerge, the deeper grew my suspicion that his work finally consisted of minting or perpetuating and in any event circulating misconceptions about his subject and in this way adding to the endless perplexity of the world. ~ Joseph O'Neill

I would like to carve my novel in a piece of wood. My characters - I would like to have them heavier, more three-dimensional ... My characters have a profession, have characteristics; you know their age, their family situation, and everything. But I try to make each one of those characters heavy, like a statue, and to be the brother of everybody in the world. ~ Georges Simenon

Depressing realization sets in. Writing was invented not by human beings but by accountants. Most of the early writing systems are records of how much crap people own, how much money they have, how much money they owe, and other lowering/boastful facts of human life. ~ Philip Hensher

But writing is like breathing--I do it because I have to. Actually, writing might be more like reading--I do it because I can't imagine stopping. ~ Heather Frost

I wrote my first real murder story as a journalist for the Daytona Beach News Journal in 1980. It was about a body found in the woods. Later, the murder was linked to a serial killer who was later caught and executed for his crimes. ~ Michael Connelly

(Quoting Goethe
We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverably for ourselves and for others. ~ James Howe

Like italics and hyphens, quotation marks are to be used as sparingly as possible. They should light the way, not darken it. ~ Eric Partridge

Jenny Marzen made millions of dollars, as opposed to nickels, by writing novels that got seriously reviewed while selling big. Amy had skimmed her first one, a mildly clever thing about a philosophy professor who discovers her husband is cheating on her with one of her grad students, and who, while feigning ignorance of the affair, drives the girl mad with increasingly brutal critiques and research tasks, at one point banishing her to Beirut, first to learn fluent Arabic and then to read Avicenna's Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb, housed in the American University. This was, Amy thought, a showoffy detail that hinted at Marzen's impressive erudition but was probably arrived at within five Googling minutes. ~ Jincy Willett

To say that I enjoyed writing ... is like saying I enjoy having fingers and toes. It's difficult to imagine life without them. ~ Dennis Covington

I think of writing as a sculptural medium. You are not building things. You are removing things, chipping away at language to reveal a living form. ~ Will Self

To sit down so often with nothing to say,-to say something so often, almost without consciousness of saying and without any remembrance or having said,-is a power of which I will not violate my modesty by boasting; but I do not believe everyone has it. ~ Michael Kelahan

A doctor is a man who writes prescriptions, till the patient either dies or is cured by nature. ~ John Taylor

Of course I want to be a best seller because I'm in the business and I want to be read, but there is no money in the world that can compensate for writing badly. ~ David Lagercrantz

I am an author of Christian Fantasy. My first 7 books were Christian Romance, but I came over to the Dark Side when I heard there were cookies. ~ Donita K. Paul

The thing about humour is that the super-ego is also at play, so what interested me, particularly in the last chapter which is key to the book -and no one seems to have picked this up in writings on Freud - is that, in the later Freud, the essence of humour is the ability to look at myself and find myself ridiculous. That makes me laugh. ~ Simon Critchley

Humility is an essential quality in writers who want to write well. ~ Margaret Jean Langstaff

Wrote Lawrence Block. "Someone once told me that fear and courage are like lightning and thunder; they both start out at the same time, but the fear travels faster and arrives sooner. If we just wait a moment, the requisite courage will be along shortly." (quoted from Write for Your Live by Lawrence Block) ~ Ralph Keyes

Stop messing about and get back to writing. ~ Craig Allan Teich

Yet early on in the marriage I found myself
despite all my self-promises
drifting into the role of wife: focusing on the renovations of the apartment, doing silly little domestic things instead of writing, using the wife role as cop-out from my work, my work which had always involved me in so much controversy and which some part of me longed to retreat from ... Even when I was forty-seven, full of my own power, my own identity, something in me wanted to escape from the fray and dwindle into a wife. It seemed to comfy, so safe. ~ Erica Jong

My favourite piece of information is that Branwell Brontë, brother of Emily and Charlotte, died standing up leaning against a mantle piece, in order to prove it could be done.

This is not quite true, in fact. My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees.

However, this is not relevant to what is currently on my mind because it concerns sloths, whereas the Branwell Brontë piece of information concerns writers and feeling like death and doing things to prove they can be done, all of which are pertinent to my current situation to a degree that is, frankly, spooky. ~ Douglas Adams

I was in the fantasy. I was selling myself on the fantasy as I was doing it. It never occurred to me. I did take notes, but just because I am a writer. I've been a writer since I was five. You don't have any sort of outlandish, shocking, extraordinary, horrifying experience without writing it down, because I know and knew that you forget things. No matter how outrageous and amazing and extraordinary and seemingly unforgettable an experience is, it's kind of like a dream. It will erode inevitably, for me. ~ Melissa Febos

The way you write affects what you say. ~ Norman Mailer

I don't know'," he said. "Those three words from a willing soul are the start of a grand and magnificent voyage." And with that he began a discourse that lasted for several weeks, covering scene-setting, establishing conflict, plot twists, and first- and third-person narration. [ I learned in these rapid-fire mini-dissertations that like most literature lovers I would come to know, Henry was a book snob. He assumed that if a current author was popular and widely enjoyed, then he or she had no merit. He made a few exceptions, such as Kurt Vonnegut, although that was mostly because Vonnegut lived on Cape Cod and so he probably had some merits as a human being, if not as a writer.
I think that the way Henry saw it was that he was not being a snob. In fact I would venture that in his view of things, snobbery had nothing to do with it. Rather, it was a matter of standards. It was bout quality in the author's craftsmanship. ~ John William Tuohy

It is well to remember that grammar is common speech formulated. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

i am infinitely yearning
brimming
and overflowing
in words

i discover
it's another way
for me
to be in tears. ~ Sanober Khan

when you know that writing your own book of life is so difficult to begin with, the least you can do for someone else, is to try to read the pages of a person rather than skip through the chapters. ~ Lauren Klarfeld

When trying to comprehend what is happening to, and through, oneself, why not question the narratives one has been handed to make sense with? This is an approach increasingly utilized within transgender knowledge production, one spearheaded by transgender people themselves. It brings to light questions about previous entries into the trans nonfiction canon, asking: Is it necessary, when writing a trans protagonist, to describe in detail a medical transition, to 'confess' conflicted feelings of body confusion? Has it even been internalized into a communal consciousness, into something resembling a trans storytelling requirement? ~ Mitch Kellaway

I've always enjoyed stories that take place in the future but my one disappointment was that the future books described never came. We're not on other planets, there are no flying cars, and the only robots we have in our homes just sweep the floor. So I wanted to write about a future that I thought could really happen. People ask me when I tell them the title of the book, 'Are we all dead?' The good news is, no. We're still here. And I even think the future in my book is strangely hopeful, although I'm sure there will be people who strongly disagree. ~ Albert Brooks

I wasn't disciplined at all. As good of an athlete as I was, I was not disciplined. Had I had the drive that I have in comedy, and acting, and writing, that's why I knew it just wasn't right for me. ~ Bernie Mac

I began dabbling in writing when I was 12, and there was never an official start to singing ... I just sang my songs because there was no one else to sing them and no one told me to shut up! ~ Brooke Fraser

I've never tried to be famous or become a bestseller, just rich and remembered. The rest is a bonus. ~ Daniel Marques

It is difficult to ever see yourself. I don't know how I've developed or grown as a writer. I hope I am continuing to take risks on the page. I hope I am continuing to ask the hard questions of myself. If we are attentive to the world and to those around us, I believe we will be attentive on the page. Writing is about presence. I want to be fully present wherever I am, alive to the pulse just beneath the skin. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

My pen.' Funny, I wrote that without noticing. 'The torch', 'the paper', but 'my pen'. That shows what writing means to me, I guess. My pen is a pipe from my heart to the paper. It's about the most important thing I own. ~ John Marsden