It’s Okay To Write Junk
By McClaren Malcolm
I am a believer, a believer in journaling. No one could be as zealous about journaling as am I. Along with that stance, I could compete with any of you and win as the most deficient in practicing the craft. From enrolling in Dr. Progoff’s intensive school of journaling to the reading of four-page magazine articles on the topic, I have yet to journal daily.
So why do I keep trying when I am a miserable failure: Because when I do journal, it works.
Here’s an example: I watched a Jack Benny retrospective on TV. Jack’s familiar voice evoked a scene from my childhood–my parents and me listening to Jack Benny on the car radio. How happy we were at that moment. Benny and his humor provided common ground for a family that had its tensions on other occasions.
As I recalled my child’s feelings, sitting in the ‘38 Chev’s back seat beaming in on the radio in front, the words poured into my journal. What a bunch of schlock I was writing, but I didn’t care. Pushing on, I finished and set the journal aside. The next day I reread the entry. More thoughts came to me, and I recounted the scene further, going deeper into what was happening in our family, to see beyond the child’s impressions.
I looked at my parents in that car scene with an adult’s perspective, a married adult with children perspective. Understanding loomed and my child’s sadness for my parents’ plight was replaced with a little bit of, well, that’s life, and they did the best they could, and I know now that they loved me.
When I reread the passage a few days later, I thought, I wrote that? I was pleased and reinforced in journaling.
I had captured an insight that would have been lost to me without my journal entry that began “Watching a retrospective of Jack Benny reminded me of Sunday nights driving home with my mother and dad from Mille Lacs Lake …. ”
How much that writing will inform my fiction writing, I don’t know. But writing isn’t a bottom line business, or at least, I do not wish to treat writing that way. The jotting down of thoughts, ideas, and snippets of conversations is a process and an adventure where continued mystery may be the only reward.
The living of our lives is lost to us if we ignore the ripples on the water and refuse to dive in, missing the rush of water, never seeing the nether creatures of the deep.
Just the experience alone is worth the journey.
To quote Diane Raab’s article in an October 2007 Writer’s Digest article, “You think differently when you have a pen in your hand. You think differently, and you observe differently. You see what’s really there. You keep a notebook to teach yourself to pay attention.”
Here are a few techniques to help you capture the life you have lived and the one you are living right now, to practice writing, perhaps to overcome a temporary writer’s block.
1. Locate the paper or notebook and pen you will use. I have watched some writers with their Mont Blanc’s writing in leather-bound rice paper books, their handwriting alone a visual worth keeping.
On the other end, grab whatever is at hand: pencil, the back of a brochure, writing in the margins, napkins, 3×5 cards. Sorry, that is the best I will get at my worst. But it works for me.
2. Make it a habit, same time every day, or as the moment arises. I believe either works.
3. Don’t edit as you write. You are entitled to write junk. Let the underwater pearls spill forth. Edit and revise later if you want to lift some of your journaling into a formal piece. Pearls were not formed in a day.
4. Write to friends, characters–dead or alive.
5. Organize your journal. Raab suggests four sections:
a. observations, conversations, comments.
b. inspiring quotations
c. raw images, phrases and lines, complete works
d. list of books to read
If you use my catch-as-catch-can non-system, create a journal file, using the subjects above as the folder headings and file away.
6. Read your journals. How else can you make use of your entries.
Don’t stop here. Talk to other writers. (I got this idea from a writer friend.) Use prompts to prime your thoughts. Choose one quickly and write for 5 minutes. Words:
China … china … home … maps … mayonnaise … butter
Complete the thought:
I kissed ( …)
The dancing pig (…)
When I eat too much (…)
Roasting marshmallows with (…)
I get energy from (…)
Run with the thought:
Pain is a window to growth.
Pain is to be avoided at all cost.
He floated unseen, above the citizens at the political rally.
I remember my first day of school.
I get energy from watching John Travolta movies.
The color orange makes my eyes blink.
I was not meant to be a psychic.
I was curious but yellow.
Describe a fictional character.
Journaling is a worthy study subject. I recommend “Writing Down the Bones” by Natalie Goldberg as a good first dive into the rippling waters. Goldberg has a bait bucket full of lures helpful to all writers.
And don’t be afraid to write junk. The lustrous pearl started life in the belly of a clam, a clam irritated by a piece of grit. Plunge the depths of your observations; bring up those clams; with pen in hand, pry them open for your lustrous pearls. Journal!
