Creative Journal Writing: The Art and Heart of Reflection

By Stephanie Dowrick

Winner of the COVR Award for Book of the Year (2007)

From the #1 creativity publisher in the country comes our latest creativity bestseller—Creative Journal Writing—the ultimate book for those who are looking to use this powerful tool to heal, expand, and transform their lives.

In this exceptionally positive and encouraging book, Stephanie Dowrick frees the journal writer she believes is in virtually everyone, showing through stories and examples that a genuine sense of possibility can be revived on every page.

Creative journal writing goes way beyond just recording events on paper. It can be the companion that supports but doesn?t judge, a place of unparalleled discovery, and a creative playground where the everyday rules no longer count. Proven benefits of journal writing include reduced stress and anxiety, increased self-awareness, sharpened mental skills, genuine psychological insight, creative inspiration and motivation, strengthened ability to cope during difficult times, and overall physical and emotional well-being.

Combining a rich choice of ideas with wonderful stories, quotes, and her refreshingly intimate thoughts gained through a lifetime of writing, Dowrick?s insights and confidence make journal writing irresistible?and your own life more enchanting. Included in Creative Journal Writing are:

u stories of how people have used journal writing to transform their lives;

· inspirational instructions, guidelines, and quotes;
· key principles, practical suggestions, and helpful hints;
· 125 starter topics, designed to help even the most reluctant journal writer;
· more than forty powerful exercises;
· and much more!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Release date: Feb 5, 2009
• ISBN: 9781440659416

Stephanie Dowrick

Stephanie Dowrick, PhD, D. Min, has won major US awards for three of her books: Choosing Happiness: Life & soul essentials, Creative Journal Writing, and Heaven on Earth. A former leading publisher and psychotherapist, her much-loved best-sellers also include Intimacy & Solitude, Forgiveness and Other Acts of Love, The Universal Heart, Seeking the Sacred, and, on reading and Rilke, In the Company of Rilke. Her most recent book (2024) is Your name is not Anxious. She has written fiction for adults and children, contributes widely to mainstream and social media, and is known for her public speaking and workshop/retreat leadership in person and via Zoom. Dr. Dowrick was born in Aotearoa/New Zealand, spent sixteen years in Europe, mainly in the UK where she co-founded The Women’s Press in London. She now lives in Australia and makes active use of global social media. www.stephaniedowrick.com

Book preview

Getting started

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Writing a journal may change your life

I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart.

—Anne Frank

On thick white pages in a leather-bound book or scribbled across the backs of envelopes tossed into a cardboard box, written faithfully through a lifetime or with years in between entries, written lyrically or as a bare list, journal writing may well be the most accommodating of all writing forms. It may also be the most pleasurable.

The impulse to write is natural for many people. Yet the demands of more public forms of writing can be inhibiting or even crushing. In the private spaces of your journal, a genuine sense of possibility is renewed with every blank page. The internal judge or critic that so often sits between the writer and the page can be fired. The possibilities of style, mood, and expression that journal writing offers are limitless.

Journal writing is a supreme way to record your own life’s journey. It is a way to discover what matters to you and even what and how you think. It is a gloriously self-directed source of inner development, yet it also makes the world beyond your own self more real and more vivid. It can become an interface between you and the outside world. It can become a companion that supports but doesn’t judge. It can be a place of discovery, of learning, of emotional relief and insight. It can also become a playground, where the everyday rules of writing, reflecting, problem solving, goal setting, production, and planning no longer apply.

Without restrictions or censorship your mind can race—or slow down. It can step outside boxes or turn them sideways. It can make utterly fresh connections or simply pause, allowing you to see what is familiar with new eyes. It can train you to observe with subtlety all kinds of situations. And it can help you to learn something of value even from the unwelcome ones.

Journal writing will train and hone your eye for beauty. It will invite you into the present moment (while also allowing you to roam your past). It will let you reexperience awe and wonder. It will let you intensify and renew your pleasure in events and situations that have gone well. It will support your recovery (and the gaining of wisdom) from the times you wish had never happened.

However small the physical pages on which you are writing, your journal is big enough to encompass all of your selves: your intuitive self, your everyday competent self, your dreamy self, your practical self, your uncertain self, and the self who knows just what is needed. This is a place, too, where you can talk to your soul or spirit and hear your soul talk back to you. You can talk to other people, alive or dead; you can release uncomfortable emotions and find new responses.

It is virtually impossible to write a journal and not discover more about yourself. It is absolutely impossible to write a journal and not put your own stamp on it. Every journal is inevitably original. When it comes to journal writing, there is no formula. There are certainly props and prompts. And I share many here. In journal writing, though, these are intended to be liberating, not constricting.

The freshness that comes from writing in this way very naturally permeates your life. A journal consists of observations, insights, memories, impressions, and feelings. It may also include plans and analysis. It may have layers of secrets and trails of jokes. It is the container for dreams and hopes. Sometimes it is actually marked by tears. It is where failures and successes weave to form a texture that can eventually be seen as the reflection of a complex and rich life. Failures or setbacks may matter a little less as the journal helps you increasingly to see your life as a whole. Successes and satisfactions may be valued a little more.

Journal writing is the key to discovering your own unique inner world. Your journal belongs to you, and your journal reflects you. For many journal writers, it is also a guide, a map, a treasure trove, and a repository of memories.

As I write these lines, I am thinking about the chart that was once on the back of my kitchen door, measuring my children’s height as they grew. A journal tracks your growth, too, but with greater subtlety. Sometimes it is hard to see how far you have come until you are startled by something you wrote five years ago or maybe only five months ago.

Journal writer Dieter has this to say about writing his journal: Writing a journal makes you examine your life. As long as you record mainly the positive, you will have hours of reading in old age. You probably wish you could relive your life. You will be.

This view nicely echoes a statement from the writer D. H. Lawrence: If only one could have two lives: the first in which to make one’s mistakes . . . and the second in which to profit by them.

And American writer Gail Godwin says, I write for my future self, as well as my present mood. And sometimes, to set the record straight, I jot down a word or two in old diaries to my former self—to encourage, to scold, to correct, to set things in perspective.

Retire the judge

Journal writing is all about process, not goals or outcome.

It is freeing, not constraining.

Journal writing is also where you can retire the inner critic or judge.

How you write, what you write, matters only to you.

You are writing to please no one but yourself.

Celebrate!

Marco Polo, May Sarton, Thomas Merton, Anaïs Nin, Andy Warhol, Richard E. Grant, Anne Frank, Samuel Pepys, Winston Churchill, Cleopatra, Louis XVI, Rainer Maria Rilke, Virginia Woolf, and Katherine Mansfield are just some of the countless people who have valued the art and practice of journal writing. Each of them, through years of writing about the large and small matters that make up a life, created something absolutely distinct. What they wanted from journal writing, and what they brought to it, reflected their unique interaction of needs, passions, reflections, and aspirations.

In her novel Fear of Flying, Erica Jong’s heroine, Isadora Wing, reflects on what journal writing has given her: As I read the notebook, I began to be drawn into it as into a novel. I almost began to forget that I had written it. And then a curious revelation started to dawn. I stopped blaming myself; it was that simple.... [It was] heartening to see how much I had changed in the past four years.

For me, journal writing is the writing and thinking place where I am least inhibited. It’s where my great love for words (inherited from both my schoolteacher parents) can pour out without any sense of judgment about what other people will think of what I am doing or saying. Often, though, it is not the words that I am paying most attention to but the thoughts that I am seeking to express. Here, too, there are far fewer moments of self-consciousness or censorship than in most of the other writing that I do. These days I am writing my books, as I have done for more than twenty years now; I am writing my regular Inner Life column in Good Weekend; I am writing my Interfaith services and material for the talks and retreats that I regularly give; I am writing countless e-mails; and, intermittently but passionately, I continue to write a journal as I have done—sometimes with long gaps—for most of my life.

Throughout this book I describe and demonstrate what is specific for me about journal writing, but the qualities that come first to mind are intimacy and freedom. In fact, it is not only free—especially of censorship—it is also freeing.

There is much that I can say or do in the pages of a journal that would be impossible in other writing contexts. I can create a still life in words, for example, entirely for my own pleasure: a snapshot that has greater depth and dimension than a photograph ever could. The frustrated painter in me gets tremendous pleasure from that. I can dwell on my family, on my totally personal concerns, without any fears that I am boring anyone or being too self-focused. I can write lovingly and probably sentimentally about our cats. I can copy out prayers or thoughts that support my spiritual development.

Many journal writers who are also professional writers, as I am, use their journals as the place to develop ideas or reflect on their intellectual work in progress. I can see the value of this and have always loved reading journals that include this—lately, for example, and very intensely, the journals of Thomas Merton and Rainer Maria Rilke; earlier, the journals of Virginia Woolf and Anaïs Nin. (May Sarton is also widely read, but she, too, is very focused on domestic details and the natural world, while also writing about her life as a poet and novelist.)

What I have also learned, however, is that admiring a particular style of journal writing, or the way journal writing can be used, is not enough. Journal writing is naturally instinctive, perhaps the most instinctive form of writing that we have. That’s why it can be such a powerful support for our creativity generally, if we allow that. And that’s why there is no right or perfect way to do it. Very directly it reflects what is unique and irreplaceable about each person’s internal world.

My own journal writing suffers, in comparison with my professional writing, in that it almost always comes last. The only exception was when I was going through an especially rough patch some years ago (that lasted for several years) and my need was overwhelming for the depth of inner dialogue that only journal writing makes possible.

More generally, when I am under a great deal of (self-inflicted) pressure to produce writing in my other fields, it is my journal writing that gets set aside. (Lavish promises to ourselves are not enough.) Yet when I am not writing anything at all in my journal, I know very well what I am missing.

Journal writing is the place where I can be most playful and frivolous, where my life as a mother gets its due prominence, where my immediate physical environment looms largest, where my professional writing life—which truly dominates and drives my waking hours—fades into relative insignificance. Here is a short example, written the night before I was due to teach one hundred people journal writing. It reflects the work I am doing the next day and to some extent was prompted by it. What dominates though, at least from my perspective, is my interior life and my domestic life.

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Stephanie Dowrick: Journal extract

Friday, 22 Nov. My room. 9:30 p.m. Still hot and sticky. Insects on overdrive. Griffyn [one of our cats] trying to eat my pen. Gabe [my son] upstairs playing music as he writes. Nick Cave. Kezia [my daughter] out at training. House feels quiet despite Cave. In the cave. Restful. I used to play music while I write far more often than I do now. It feels like a loss, not a choice. Looking forward to the [journal writing] workshop tomorrow. Seems ages since I taught something so relatively straightforward—a lovely way to connect with a big group. This is what’s possible. Journal writing can give you THIS. And THIS. Griff finding it unbearable that he can’t climb onto this journal that’s edging him out of his rightful place on my lap. Geraldine [my sister] stayed Tues and Wed nights. What a treat. Small talks but not small talk in our nighties. ‘Do you have time to look for a new sofa with me?’ ‘Maybe, but I would replace the carpet first.’ Who else would tell me? How wonderful to have and to still have my sister. Why is Griffyn so much more engaged with pushing in when I am writing than when I am reading? Is he like a child—thinking this is too much engagement that is not to do with him? Or does the moving pen wake up the hunter in him? He can hear my pen move from rooms away. And hear me stir before I have stirred. K. home. Garage door down. Nick Cave retired.

Your journal-writing voice and concerns will be no less distinct. And what you get from your journal writing will mirror that. So, are you ready for this? Are you choosing?

Writing a journal—this harmless, portable, practically cost-free, and mild-mannered interest—can really be life-changing. It can be the companion you need whatever life is bringing you. It can also be addictive, surprising, moving, illuminating, and tremendously enjoyable. It can deliver a vast array of invaluable new insights. It lets you read your own life even while you are writing it. It lets you see the world around yourself more richly and deeply. The familiar can become newly strange; the strange can become familiar.

It supports you to value your own history, judgments, values, and opinions. (After all, no one knows you better than you know yourself. But sometimes you need to discover what you know.) It can give you an invaluable sense of being at the center of your life rather than at the periphery. At the same time, and even when you remain at the center of your own writing, it may make you less anxiously self-centered or self-concerned. And it will certainly let you know who and what are really important to you.

Journal writing can make you grateful for the life you are living—with all its complexity.

It can make you laugh, seethe, cry, howl, rejoice.

It can bring to life your artist’s soul.

It can make you honest.

It can give you a greater sense of choice about how you are living your life.

This is how Meredith describes her journal-writing life.

Meredith

"I have been journal writing on and off for about 14 years; most writing seems to have coincided with trips overseas or other critical periods in my life. Recently (last 12 months) I have been pretty disciplined with keeping a journal. This coincided with a major shift in my personal life—my husband decided to leave our marriage for another woman. The process of getting ‘stuff’ out of my head was extremely important to me (and still is!!). Sometimes, particularly in the middle of the night, when I felt I couldn’t call friends, my journal was there, waiting to ‘listen’ to me. Writing in my journal felt like a safe way to organize my thoughts so I could be in the processes of working out just what I wanted, where I was going, how I felt, and dealing with my grief.

Some of the entries are extremely brief; others stretch out into nine or 10 pages. I’m up to book number three over the last year! Sometimes the short entries relate to being very tired, and the gaps in the journal may coincide with trips away for work and being exhausted in the evenings and not giving it a priority in the mornings. Some of the longer entries were when I wasn’t sleeping that well and I felt the need to free up my racing mind by writing.

Some of my really long entries are full of anger and despair, while others describe moments of moving on and beautiful experiences. The same goes for short entries. I recall one entry where I wrote, ‘I am still cranky with ______.’

I do reread my journals, and that is a very powerful experience to read how much I have worked through and also to remind myself that even in the pits of my darkest moments, there was still beauty and even humor. Currently I am interested in seeing where I was 12 months ago or six months ago and to appreciate the process and my journey."

Your most creative self

The work of writing for me can be, or can be very close to, the simple job of being: by creative reflection and awareness to help life itself live in me.

—Thomas Merton

Journal writing offers an invaluable opportunity to deepen your creativity across all aspects of your life, not just writing. I feel so passionately about this: the stirring and developing of your creative abilities through journal writing. Creativity is key to feeling alive, to meeting situations freshly even when things are not going as brilliantly as you might want. It’s key to doing things, thinking about events, facing life with some originality, using your senses—in your own way and style. And those benefits will emerge whether or not you write well in the conventional sense or believe you have enough or even anything much to say.

A creative moment brings energy with it. Laughing out loud, opening up to an aha moment, reading or writing something that wakes you up, looking at a stale problem with new eyes, creating something of beauty that may be no grander than a single white flower in a narrow glass vase, or setting a table with

Reviews for Creative Journal Writing

[lisacmiller · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I liked this book. It was an easy read. The author keeps you engaged.. There are some good ideas in here.

[dendrea · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

helped to start me on my reflective writing project