This piece—part 3 in the “foundational series”—had to be separate from the journal-keeping piece. “Process journal” is its own thing. Though between journal-keeping, reading with a reading log, and recording and reflecting on writing (aka process journal), it is a Venn diagram with three circles overlapping.
“And the physical of walking is significant. Charles Dickens’ love of walking is well-known.” This. On a trip to Italy, we walked about 20,000 steps per day and at night, sometimes long after my wife fell asleep, I’d write on my phone (a slow hunt and peck) until it ran out of power.
And running. Recently a 10-km run on my 66th birthday turned into a satisfying piece about going for a run on my 66th birthday.
Maybe one might get metaphysical about this or perhaps it’s just increased blood and oxygen to the brain.
I am discovering that process journaling is embedded in my writing! I usually have a draft of the piece I am working on and a side word document where I record snippets that aren't working or thoughts I need to come back to. And sometimes this additional word doc is just an extension of the colour-coding or comments I am making in the draft of the manuscript itself. After reading this really wonderful piece, I am eager to try jotting thoughts down both before and after the writing sessions. Perhaps I'll learn something new about my process!
On a totally different note, I am finding handwriting for both reflection journals and drafting more and more irreplaceable! To the extent that I bought an iPad and an Apple pencil to still use convertible technology while I maintain handwriting. Thanks Alison for this great piece!
Thank you for this! It is a most helpful article indeed. And, sorry for taking about 10 years to finally write this comment! I have started doing this as an experiment. It is a most wise idea to have an official notebook that is separate from your story. I suspect I was doing something sort of like this, except in a not very deliberate sort of way, so that I would print out the story and find a bunch of random sentences in the middle of a page that says something like, "find out what the name of the beer was." Then I would realize that it was probably some note to my future self, except it was hard to tell as it was mooshed in with the rest of the story.
Some while ago it was the middle of the night, and I felt very grumpy and did not feel like writing anything. And then I started listening to protest music from the 1960's on these giant headphones (so that it would not wake up my family), and it made me feel nice and rebellious and thus, like writing again. So now I have made a note in that process journal that if I am grumpy, it is a good idea to turn on annoying/rebellious hippy-ish music.
This is super helpful for me! 1 process journal per project. I’m onto it now! Funny you talk about having to remember the crap out of something cos you didnt have recording device. I just read Gulag Archipelago and author and his mates in work camp used to compose and carry poems and long form writing in their heads and gather to whisper to each other to remember cos no pad and paper.
This is so interesting. So am I grasping the idea correctly - this is like stepping back and writing about what you are writing?
“And the physical of walking is significant. Charles Dickens’ love of walking is well-known.” This. On a trip to Italy, we walked about 20,000 steps per day and at night, sometimes long after my wife fell asleep, I’d write on my phone (a slow hunt and peck) until it ran out of power.
And running. Recently a 10-km run on my 66th birthday turned into a satisfying piece about going for a run on my 66th birthday.
Maybe one might get metaphysical about this or perhaps it’s just increased blood and oxygen to the brain.
I am discovering that process journaling is embedded in my writing! I usually have a draft of the piece I am working on and a side word document where I record snippets that aren't working or thoughts I need to come back to. And sometimes this additional word doc is just an extension of the colour-coding or comments I am making in the draft of the manuscript itself. After reading this really wonderful piece, I am eager to try jotting thoughts down both before and after the writing sessions. Perhaps I'll learn something new about my process!
On a totally different note, I am finding handwriting for both reflection journals and drafting more and more irreplaceable! To the extent that I bought an iPad and an Apple pencil to still use convertible technology while I maintain handwriting. Thanks Alison for this great piece!
Thank you for this! It is a most helpful article indeed. And, sorry for taking about 10 years to finally write this comment! I have started doing this as an experiment. It is a most wise idea to have an official notebook that is separate from your story. I suspect I was doing something sort of like this, except in a not very deliberate sort of way, so that I would print out the story and find a bunch of random sentences in the middle of a page that says something like, "find out what the name of the beer was." Then I would realize that it was probably some note to my future self, except it was hard to tell as it was mooshed in with the rest of the story.
Some while ago it was the middle of the night, and I felt very grumpy and did not feel like writing anything. And then I started listening to protest music from the 1960's on these giant headphones (so that it would not wake up my family), and it made me feel nice and rebellious and thus, like writing again. So now I have made a note in that process journal that if I am grumpy, it is a good idea to turn on annoying/rebellious hippy-ish music.
This is super helpful for me! 1 process journal per project. I’m onto it now! Funny you talk about having to remember the crap out of something cos you didnt have recording device. I just read Gulag Archipelago and author and his mates in work camp used to compose and carry poems and long form writing in their heads and gather to whisper to each other to remember cos no pad and paper.