Writing equipment

Little man watching as I write

It is easy to say you want to write, but it is much harder to find the time; or find the time when you feel inspired or motivated. Frequently when I feel inspired to write (like now) I feel guilty that I should be doing something else like tidying, cleaning or looking after baby!

Recently I’ve been reviewing one of my old journals and notice this is not a new challenge. And that was before I had children…

With Christmas almost here it means the new year and the traditional time for making resolutions is not far away. I’m not a fan of new year resolutions because I believe it adds too much pressure and you are more likely to achieve the outcome if you set well developed goals at a time appropriate to you and not necessarily defined by a calendar.

However, having said that, this year I have a desire to set some resolutions. As I’ve been doing my Christmas shopping I’ve been reminded of things I’d like to do and have developed a list of things I’d like to achieve by the end of 2012.

Complete weekend novelist – I was progressing well through this book until I wrote a post about it and I haven’t used it since! Therefore I would like to complete the remaining chapters.

Write journal at least once a week – although I have written a journal for many years I tend to go through phases of not writing, sometimes it is days, but sometimes it can be months. I would like to have some continuity in my records and think once a week will provide this without being too difficult to keep.

Write things I’m grateful for every day – I think it is good to finish the day thinking about the good things that have happened or things I’m grateful for, and I sometimes list them in my journal. However this is fairly erratic and I would like to do it more regularly. I’ve dropped some hints and hope I will be given a five year journal for Christmas and this will provide a small space to write each day, but will also enable me to review them easily each year.  ... Read more 543 words

Journals started off as a private record, think of Samuel Pepys, one of the earliest known journals written in code so other people could not read it. With the establishment of mass communications came the opportunity to share journals e.g. newspaper social diaries, television, video diaries. However it is only with the internet that there is an opportunity to share writing in real time.

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Picture taken by vanhookc

It is so easy to share your writing using the web, with blogging sites e.g. WordPress, Blogger, article sites e.g. Ezine, Squidoo and fiction sites e.g. FanFiction, Fictionpress. In 2005, it was said a new blog was created every second, so people obviously like this method of sharing their writing. But can you write the same online, knowing it will be public as you can in a personal notebook or computer?

I’m sure some people can, but I can’t.

My online writing

My first blog was on Livejournal and I never worked out why I should write there as well as in a journal so it became a strange collection of updates and notifications from other sites. This may explain why I didn’t keep it for much longer than a year. I started a blog on productivity and goals in 2007 and most of the posts are on topics that I would not think about including in my journal. Last summer I kept a log of our summer holiday so my family could read how my 1.5 year old daughter found her first sailing trip, but kept a journal at the same time.

So I’ve had several years when I’ve kept a blog and a journal on similar topics, what does it tell me?

Comparison of online and personal writing

I’ve collected extracts from my blogs and journals which were written on the same day and the same topic.  ... Read more 1312 words, 1 image

People who keep journals have life twice.

Jessamyn West
American writer (1902 – 1984)

As I have started rereading my journals I am thinking about adding the post in to some software so I can search my writing and use my journals instead of having them just sit in a cupboard. I used lifejournal years ago and it currently has close to 500 entries, however I don’t know if it the best software for me now, therefore I have been researching the software that is now available.

I am intending to continue writing my journal hardcopy and then transfer it in to the software so I am not interested in features such as prompts or timer, but the facility to search the text and tag the text is essential. I have therefore split the available software into two lists, those that seem to meet my requirements that I will test and other software that maybe of interest to other people.

Journal software I will test

life journal

i*write 3.2

Net time diary

The journal

Simply Journal

Alpha journal

Reflective journal

Other journal software

Forever journal 2.0

Ultra Recall this is much more than journal software, but it has a journal add-on

Star message diary

Dear Diary

E Diary Gold

1st Journal

All in one journal

Effective journal

Diary defender

Mondo! E journal I can’t access developers site, but there is a good review here. It is still possible to buy it from download sites

Diary One

My personal diary

Smart Diary Suite this appears to be underdevelopment so there is no information on the developers website, but there is a review at download.com  ... Read more 342 words, 1 image

So its the 1st January and you are thinking of starting a journal, but you don’t know where to begin. It is important to remember that there is not one way of journalling, the only correct way is whatever works for you. Here are a few ideas that will hopefully motivate you to get started

• Consider what type of journal you want to keep
• Think about how you will be keeping your journal as it dictate both the collection type and size, for instance if you want keep a mediation journal on your commute home using an audio recorder maybe most appropriate, but if you want to keep a gratitude journal as events occur a small notebook you can keep in a pocket or handbag maybe better suited
• Always date an entry and consider including the time and location as they will provide reference details when you review your journals later
• If you live with other people you maybe worried they will read your journal, there are several options you can try to stop them; tell them you do not want them to read your journal, keep it at a different location e.g. work, lock it away, encrypt it on a computer, write in code, write a joint journal or suggest they keep a journal as well so they understand the desire for privacy
• Write as quickly as you can and do not worry about whether you are writing correctly
• Write honestly, do not lie to yourself in your own personal journal

Of course, if you are writing a journal one of the problems with starting is dealing with that blank first page. It can look frightening, but instead think of it as the doorway to an exciting record of your life. Here are some ideas to help you start (you can fine more here).  ... Read more 435 words, 1 image

As the start of the new year approaches, people often think about starting a journal. There is no reason why you need to start a journal on the 1st January, but it is a popular time to start, perhaps because of preprinted diaries. If you are thinking of keeping a journal here are some ideas for the type of journal you could keep.

Time capsule

This is a record of events that are important to you, for instance news or sports stories. You could simply keep newspaper cuttings or you could add your thoughts and comments on the headlines. I kept one of these at school which covers the first Iraq war and my sister kept one of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. It does not need to be national events, it could be more local events, for instance connected to your local town, school or sports club.

Specific topic

You many want to follow your progress on a specific topic, such as your exercise habits or children. You may find it useful to start these entries using a template so you can easily track progress over the year, such as exercise undertaken, weight. These journals do not need to be limited to one topic, for instance Ira Progoff encourages writing on different topics and filing each topic within different sections in a folder rather than chronologically.

Dreams

A dream journal should be written every morning as soon as you wake up to capture as many details of the dream as possible, the longer you leave it after waking the fewer details you can remember. You could just capture the dreams or you may want to analyse them using a dream dictionary , or just looking at the imagery yourself and suggesting meanings; it is often easier to do this a few days after having the dream. It is good to give each dream a title and keep an index of them so you can review them later, perhaps monthly, and notice any patterns.  ... Read more 1564 words

In the past, I’ve known people to feel threatened when they learn I keep a journal. This feeling always surprised me, but I’ve recently discovered that my mother in law has started keeping a journal and its made me think what it is like from the other perspective. This is almost completely new because although I know my sister, husband and sister in law have all kept journals in the past, I believe they were all fairly short lived.

Photograph by edenpictures

Journals are a great way of providing social context to history and as the journal writer that context is in your hands.  So how do you feel about people close to you writing journals, such as friends or family and adding their views to the social context? You could see it as a threat as their writing may provide a different point of view, but I see it as a great strength. For instance, when I read the first part of Virginia Woolf’s diary there were footnotes with information from other sources expanding on points that Woolf glossed over.

When my daughter is learning to write I will encourage her to write a journal as I hope it will teach her to enjoy writing and to respect the privacy of my journal. In the future, I hope she will enjoy comparing our journals and viewing events from our different perspectives (this is something  I would love to do with my childhood).

Therefore, I don’t feel threatened by my mother in law’s journal; in fact I’m curious about it. She looks after my daughter one day a week and I’m sure she will write about the time they spend together. As I haven’t written a lot about my daughter as times, I’m sure in the future her journal will be a pleasure to read for both me and my daughter.  ... Read more 339 words, 1 image

This is a question I’ve been asking myself recently. I’ve kept a diary on and off since I was eleven and feel that my life is more productive when I keep one. In recent years my writing has been more off than on, however, over the last few weeks I’ve had the urge to start writing again, but I don’t know why.

Of course, one of the main benefits of keeping a journal is the record of your life, which could become historically important (think The Diary of Samuel Pepys). However, there are also meant to be many other benefits of keeping a personal journal:

• helps goal setting and measuring progress
• simply your life
• strengthen your relationships
• empower you
• aids reflection
• reduces stress
• helps focus
• helps to practice writing skills
• creates personal space
• helps to develop self expression
• helps with problem solving

Why did I start writing a journal?

Kate's diaries

I started my first journal in 1989 because of the book The Diary of a Teenage Health Freak

because I wanted to have a diary published too. My entries were just writing about the day and thoughts on future events. I didn’t think any more deeply about journal writing until Amazon recommended a journal writing book in 1998. This opened up a whole new world to me that I had to know more about.

Why did I stop writing a journal?

Basically, I think I got overloaded with information and I forgot what a journal is actually for. There are so many different techniques that can be incorporated in to writing a journal and I think I was trying to use all of them so it got too complicated and stressful.  ... Read more 674 words, 1 image

Kate and sister

I’ve had a lovely long weekend at my parents and had the opportunity to catch up with lots of family I haven’t seen in a long time, including sisters, nephews, cousins, aunts and uncles. A topic of frequent conversation was tracing the family tree because my sister and several other family members have been working on ours for many years.

It is amazing the information available to trace your family back generations, including their livelihood and the the exact house they lived in. Of course this information is available through official records, but the interesting part is often the personal story found through photographs and letters. So what is the equivalent today? For me it is emails, digital photographs and perhaps this blog.

Initially digital seems like a great step forward for the preservation of records, but how many emails from family and close friends are deleted as we are now overloaded with emails and photographs rarely get printed so remain on the computer which is so easy to clear by mistake.

Kate's journals

In one way, I’m offering a lot to anyone wanting to trace my life as I’ve kept journal on and off since I was eleven. They will be able to get a good understanding of my school days, a fair understanding of my university days and a poor understanding of my working life because I have written less frequently over the last few years. So perhaps it isn’t that great a record after all.

Of course we don’t know what the future will hold, digital storage could be in a completely different format meaning everything currently stored on computers or on the web becomes obsolete as has happened with other technologies such as cassette tapes. Or perhaps sites like Facebook will be the future for tracing a family tree and 100 years after the creation of the account they will be opened for public searching as the census is now.  ... Read more 334 words, 2 images