Writing from the Inside Out: Deep Journal Writing
Part 2 in the series, Write Away! Books on Writing
In Write Away! Books on Writing, I’m reporting on the books that help me write. In Part 1 of this series, Brenda Ueland encouraged us to:
Keep a slovenly, headlong, impulsive, honest diary
Here’s how.
Writing from the Inside Out: Deep Journal Writing
Here are two books I’ve referenced over the years that delve into the how’s and why’s of keeping a journal. If you are stuck in your writing, or stuck in your life, for that matter, you’ll find some value here. There are great exercises in both that you can adapt if you teach expressive writing.
These authors have assembled books that are really cleverly disguised self-coaching material. They also link the writing process with spirituality, so if the inner life or the world of spirit (however you define it) is not your cup of tea, you may wish to skip these.
Both books were published in the early 90’s, an era that was just ripe with New Age spirituality. New Age bookstores that opened in the mid-eighties were serving these types of books up to an eager crowd of people interested in alternative everything: healing, spirituality, work, lifestyle, and…creativity, including writing.
I mention this because I bought both of these books right when they were published, and they have the flavor of that era, at least to me. They might not for new readers.
As with any book or process, different strokes for different folks. You don’t need to read these from cover to cover to get writing again. This could actually be a stalling technique. Just pick one exercise that resonates, or read one chapter then go write about three take-away’s you had. You’ll be writing again without any strain.
Life’s Companion: Journal Writing as a Spiritual Quest by Christina Baldwin (Bantam) 1990
This book was a recommended staff pick at Barbara’s Bookstore, an independent small chain in Chicago. While waiting for my tax appointment at the H&R Block on Broadway, I wandered across the street to Barbara’s where this book found me back in 1990. Since I couldn’t put it down once I started reading, I bought it and read while the newly-minted CPA doing my tax return asked me an occasional question.
I’d already had a lifelong habit of journal writing that at time felt somewhat strange (why do I need to write about everything?) and burdensome (when moving to another apartment.) The boxes of were journals piling up. I was also on and off the wagon of a meditation practice, and I liked the inter-weaving of spirituality and creativity I found in Baldwin’s book.
Life’s Companion helped me to use my journal more as a tool of inquiry and problem-solving, than as a big rant. Not that there’s anything wrong with a big rant. But I wanted more from my journals. Especially if I was going to have to physically move them again.
The focus of Life’s Companion is much more about nurturing one’s inner life, than it is about writing. The journal is used as a means to that end.
This book can easily be used as a workbook, because of how it’s structured. The right hand pages form the narrative, which you can read all the way through if you are procrastinating on your writing. Hey, we all have those days.
The left-hand pages are chock full of writing prompts and exercises, examples from the author and her students (all are anonymous, so you don’t know which are hers, which I found a little annoying) and best of all, some excellent quotes on writing, spirituality and the creative process by dozens of identified sources.
Baldwin uses the metaphor of travel and journeying to explore the writing process and there a relevant tips you can adapt to your own travel journal or travel writing.
About her own journaling throughout a tour of Europe as a teenager,
“…I made an important discovery: my real journey had very little to do with traveling Europe, and a whole lot to do with traveling my own mind.”
I don’t know about you, but that is like a permission slip to acknowledge the sometimes gigantic inner shifting that comes about through travel. Stuff that has nothing to do with the supposed romance of Paris or the delights of Provence.
Wherever you are traveling, especially if you are taking an inner journey, Life’s Companion is just that, a good companion to help you make sense of things via our favorite medium: writing.
Writing for Your Life by Deena Metzger (HarperCollins) 1992
The subtitle of this book has been changed to:
Discovering the Story of Your Life’s Journey
The first edition subtitle is: A Guide and Companion to the Inner Worlds
Who knows why the subtitle of this book changed? Perhaps an editor wanted it to be more about writing. Maybe the “companion to the inner worlds” things seemed to new age. Or someone in marketing at HarperCollins presented a compelling case.
After you’ve gotten into the creative habit or practice of journal writing, Metzger’s book helps you go deeper into your own writing and extract the story and forms your writing might take in published form.
Metzger’s own stories are a compelling read, woven into the how-to narrative. There is a sense of sitting at the foot of a wise teacher, who teaches through story-telling.
In fact, Metzger and Baldwin both teach variations of story circles and writing retreats in this manner.
In addition to being a poet and writer, Metzger is a therapist so her work has definite psychotherapeutic bent.
“To write is, above all else, to construct a self.”
“The first and foremost question a writer, public or intimate, must ask is, What must I say? To begin to know the answer to this question is to begin to know the essential self.”
The roots of her shamanic explorations are here, too. Again, pick and choose what resonates and leave the rest. If you’re into psychology or shamanism, you’ll probably like this. Yeah, I know those are two widely ranging subjects. Metzger is an eloquent representative of both.
My favorite part of Writing for Your Life (in addition to the title) is the first chapter On Creativity, which discusses how to deal with the inner critic, facing fear, daring to write. and how journal writing can be transformed into poems, stories, play and other forms. Metzger’s journal prompts and exercises can be used to help you be your own writing mentor or teacher.
It makes a case for journal writing as a powerful way to explore new ideas and themes without the pressure for the writing to be anything.
“The writing we are doing here may remain in journal form forever…It may be addressed to another individual in a letter or a poem, or to the world, eventually, in the form of a novel. But in this moment, we need think of none of this-only of the words presenting themselves and our willingness to set them down.”
Unfortunately, this first section only makes up the first fifty pages of the book. And those 50 pages have made the book worth keeping (for me). The next 200 pages are much more philosophical and wax on about the role of story and story telling for the individual, and about The Larger Story: Archetypes, Fairy Tales and Myths.
This will probably only be interesting to folks who want a rather philosophical treatment of these subjects, or who want some gutsy exercises to try for memoir writing. These sections might also be helpful to others who teach writing, because there is some fine backstory here you could riff on and share with your students.
But I’m afraid these sections just keep me reading and not writing so much. And my aim is to be writing at least as much as I’m reading.
How About You?
I’m curious. Do you use journaling to help you write for publication? How have you used a journal, or not?
And if you have a favorite book that helps you get off your duff and write, let me know.
Thanks for reading. I’ll continue to post on this topic, as there several other books that I use to keep the writing mojo workin’.
Now go write…..
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Howdy! I’m Lisa Sonora Beam, author of The Creative Entrepreneur. I teach people how to get unstuck and use their creativity to make a living doing what they love. 
