Documenting Everything: Your Journal is Your Logbook

Sailors had it for years. Great explorers had it as well. If you go on an expedition to an ancient Nahuatl mound, more than likely the anthropologist wish have one too - so, why shouldn't you own one?

No, I'm not speaking of the scurvy that overrun the sailors! No, I'm not speaking of the Loch Dry land Monster or Bigfoot, whom explorers claimed to have seen in snowy Canadian province winters. Nor am I speaking of a lost city, which was ne'er truly lost, but just buried under mounds of earth and recently dug up by an archaeologist.

I'm speaking of journals. Journals? Yes! Keeping a journal can be just as more of an adventure as sailing the high seas, exploring unknown Canadian geographic area or creating by removal in the dirt to find buried treasure.

Journals have been a source of reflection for centuries. My suggestion is to look at your writing career as if you're an human analyzing new-found land; an anthropologist creating by removal up new artifacts and renaming them and so on...

How can you do this? Well, view your journal as a book and document your daily happenings. Here is a advisable format for keeping your captain's log.

Divide your journal entries into sections: Date, Weather, Mood, Events and Freewrite

1. Date: This is the obvious one (for several people). Write the month, day and the year. As well write which day of the week it is (i.e., Gregorian calendar month 17, 2001; Monday).

2. Weather: Do note of the temperature outside. Is it 100 degrees? Or maybe it's only 20 degrees? Is it descending and 35 degrees? Snowing and 110 degrees? Descending cats and dogs? (Don't step in a poodle....)

3. Mood: What's going on in your head? Did you just get off the phone with your ex-lover who ruined your day and sank you into the depths of depression? Write just about it. Did you manage to pull off several wondrous passive-aggressive revenge against aforementioned ex-lover? Write just about that too and how it ready-made you feel.

4. Events: Here's wherever things get a bit complex - for some. You have to do your homework. Watch television, see the newspaper and write a few lines just about what's going on in your city, state, country or the earth in general.

5. Freewrite: Here's your chance to shine. Since we're all writers, we should leave a section for freewriting. Allow yourself several space to just write without aim without direction. But, here's the challenge - try to limit yourself to a certain number of lines.

When you support these entries for a week, two weeks or a longer period of time, it can be extremely beneficial. Examination and different the Mondays or Tuesdays could be a astonishing learning experience.

Many times I've written stories and wanted to "know" what 78 degrees felt like, so I went to my journal and found an entry, see my mood descriptions and weather descriptions and was easily advised from my own documentation.

Keep in mind, a nice writer documents everything - whether it be on paper or just in the mind's filing cabinet. But, to support things in order, try to support your documentation on paper - or at least saved to disk.

About The Author

Stephen Jordan, a medical editor, has five years experience inside the educational business industry. Sir leslie stephen was a freelance editor with such educational foundations as Princeton Review, The College Board, New House of york University, and Columbia University. Away from the office, Sir leslie stephen promotes his creative writing with his home-freelance business OutStretch Publications and his artwork. Sir leslie stephen holds two Bachelor of Arts degrees in writing and literature from Alderson-Broaddus College of Philippi, West Virginia.
Editor@OutStretch.net

This article was denote on Jan 07, 2004