Writing helps us survive and stay sane. It holds us together or helps
put us back together after we fall apart. Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing
I picked up the morning pages habit in 1999 while taking a class on Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and have been journaling ever since. Two four-foot shelves hold my collection of morning pages, writing practice, travel logs, and notes from classes and books.
Often the content is a boring whine as I grapple with issues that seem too big to handle or that I didn’t choose and never wanted. But over the years I have scribbled my way to a better understanding of myself, my family, and the men in my life. I confronted angers and fears, processed grief, worked out the details of projects, and brainstormed personal essays and short stories. The exercise also helped me to quit smoking cigarettes: I substituted writing about it for doing it.
In 2017, alone, I filled a 12-week Artist’s Way morning pages journal and two one-subject spiral notebooks with details of and how I felt about the changes the year brought:
a long-distance relationship after living single for over twenty years
a Category 4 hurricane named Harvey making landfall in Rockport, TX, where I lived
my 93-year-old mother’s death
Over the next months, I arranged Mom’s memorial service with my sister—while analyzing our complicated family history—and tried to recover some normalcy after the devastating storm. Within the year, I committed to the relationship and moved to Michigan. And I managed the particulars and emotions of it all in my notebooks, as usual.
Sometimes I tell myself, “You should destroy the evidence!”
Then I figure, if my heirs can stand to read the stuff, let them. Even I tire of the drone. Besides, it serves as great reference material. Also in 2018, the scribbling paid a literal bonus when my essay Before and After, composed from entries journaled during and following Hurricane Harvey, won the $500 first prize in a WomenOnWriting quarterly nonfiction contest.
Kay, I can certainly relate to this. I have a collection of journals dating back to when I was a teenager. Your description of what's in them is spot on!
I need to go through it. I have one notebook in particular that houses some awful poetry. It all used to be online, but I kept my original journal. I'm glad I did so, otherwise it would have been lost. I need to hunt down one poem in particular.
I, too, have been journaling for a number of years, though I have not been faithful to the craft, and sometimes go for long periods without writing. When I look at how long it has been since my last entry, I am saddened that I waited so long for inspiration to write again. Que sera, sera.