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I've heard it said that a writer needs to keep a journal. It's the morning stretch, a sun salutation, a flossing of the mind. Maintaining a journal is good writing hygiene. If you write in your journal every day you won't have bleeding gums, or at least if you do you'll be able to describe them.

I've never been able to make a journal work at least not in the traditional sense. I open the book, I put the pen to the paper, and what do I do? I freeze. The pen doesn't move. Just write I've been told, let the words come, don't worry about what you write just write, stream of consciousness, let it flow. But it doesn't flow. I find myself trying to write something worth reading. And the truth is, I don't want to write about myself. I certainly don't want to relive the fact that I ate a donut when I'm supposed to be on a low carb diet, or that I yelled at my daughter, or that I walked my dog. The fact is that I'm not really interested in me. I know me. I want to write about the rest of the world; about the widow who raised five kids, the homeless man who sleeps in the bushes and picks up the trash on the beach, the grocery store clerk who is getting a PHd. It's in the small observations of daily life that the journal trains the eye, the ear and the mind. The value of a journal is in the recounting of a conversation, the way the mother pushes back the hair on her child's face, the smell of deep fried onion rings in the fast food parking lot. These are the moments worth recording, not whether I did my laundry or took out the garbage.

A journal is a sketchbook for words that lends itself to the self-portrait. But for me that is not where the richness of journaling lives. It lives in the prompt thrown out, the word, the image. That is what I want to write. I like to use the small nugget of focus, the grain of sand that can become a pearl if I let it. The journal is a safe place for me to do my quick sketch, my impression, my prose poem. The journal is not about me, it is about the freedom of the process, the freedom to mess it up, and not have to erase. A journal is a doodle that might just lead to a masterpiece.

Learn more about this author, Marcy Luikart.
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