Surprising Benefits of an Annual Journal Review
Journaling is how I start my every day as a writer. Rarely do I miss it. In these dark winter days, I get up before the rest of the household, make myself hot water with lemon or some tea, and get settled in my very comfy armchair in front of the fire. The house is completely silent. Dogs and family are still asleep. I know I have an hour to myself, and it’s the most precious time of my day.
My journal open on my lap, I begin writing. Usually I have to clear out what happened the day before, the concerns I have in the moment, what I have planned for that day. I write about three pages, stream of consciousness, no editing. Sometimes I stop to doodle or make a margin note. If I feel really “time luxurious,” I’ll grab my cloth bag of colored pencils and use those too.
I’ve journaled since I was eighteen. My first journal is a rather embarrassing record of my life the first year of college. I still have it. I keep it as a memory but I don’t need to include it in my annual review.
Review list
Every January, I also do a review. I read through my completed journals from the past year. Sometimes I skim but often I read each page. For me, this is hugely instructive. I find wishes I’ve forgotten. Achievements and realizations I haven’t celebrated enough. Sorrows I’m still living and need to continue to acknowledge.
My journals include quotes from what I’m reading, seeing, hearing. Nature notes for the seasons. Sketches of my dogs sleeping. I get to touch in with these again. It takes time, but it’s worth it. Totally.
For my writing life, I also scan for a few important things:
What patterns repeat over the months—what narrative have I been living this past year and how does this feed my writing?
Did my goals come true in the way I imagined—writing and other creative goals?
What am I still longing for that hasn’t yet come about—especially in my creative life?
Writing ideas—these are often sprinkled throughout, oddly, but I collect them during my review.
Pages that show these—or other useful things—are dog-eared or sticky noted to tear out when I do a reluctant weed and toss every few years.
What else?
Writing is not the only arena explored in my journals, obviously. They are rich with ordinary life stuff. There are clues everywhere, so I also note:
Dreams that feel important for my life, metaphorical clues
Inner experiences, like premonitions
Thoughts of people I want to reach out to
Unsolved problems that need a new approach (sometimes these appear in the patterns too)
In a 150 page journal, I might dog-ear twenty pages. Not that much. Most of my journaling is just blah blah release of thoughts and tension, worries that get solved on their own, stuff not worthy of rereading or saving. I’ve been enamored of Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages exercise (from The Artist’s Way) since it was first published in 1992, and it gave me huge permission to download whatever I needed in my daily journal. Nothing feels too precious to write down, not anymore.
Overview of my creative life
The annual review gives me a super valuable overview of my creative life. I like doing it in January, because of the New Year’s energy, the goal review and reset that typically happens now. Until I reread my journals, I don’t have a sense of real completion of the past year.
Often, I’ll note the learnings in my current journal, so I can study them and think about what’s next. This helps me get real about goals, too. If something was longed for in the past year but didn’t manifest naturally, do I want to pursue it now?
The emotions, memories, thoughts about this goal are laid out in the past year’s journals. I can evaluate that fully before I commit my new year’s energy.
Reviewing takes time. I dedicate this time, because I’ve found it so useful. I take it in small bites, though. Usually it sucks up a few focused hours, but it’s overall a very pleasant task. Especially in front of the winter fire.
When the reading of my thoughts makes me a little tired of myself, I take a break. Or skim! My eye is now trained, from all the years of annual journal review, to catch the gems I want to keep.
Weeding the collection . . . eventually
The collection of all these years fills an entire bookcase. Or more. I’m generating about six or seven new journals every twelve months, and I’ve been running out of space for a while.
So every few years, I set aside serious time to weed and toss. I’ve already dog-eared what I want to keep, and I tear or cut out those pages to keep as good ideas or reminders. The rest, I force myself to toss. It’s hard. I always wonder if there’s some snippet I’ll desperately want to refer back to.
But so far, that’s not happened. I’m just glad to get rid of the history that’s nothing much more than my worries of the time on the page.
When I’ve torn or cut out the sections of my past journals that I want to keep, I sort them into piles. Some are dreams or goals or visionary writings (to me, this just means ideas that are future plans or things I see for myself) and these get put into a basket to review again, because they are still fertile for my life now. There are writing thoughts, character sketches, ideas for another book or story which I gather into my current writing notebook (and when that gets too cumbersome, into a plastic tie-front folder). Other stuff—quotes I love and want to remember, memories to cherish, ideas to consider, resolutions from a challenge I have passed through and learned from—get sorted into my current journal or another folder.
All in all, I reduce the stack of old journals on one shelf by about a third each time. If you do the math, considering the number I add each year, I am just keeping up. But that’s OK.
The process of journaling is worth it, totally, and the process of review is worth it as well.
Your Weekly Writing Exercise
I hope, as a serious writer, you journal. It helps clear the mind for creative impulses, or so I’ve found.
And if you’re like me and did journal this past year, consider setting aside an afternoon one weekend for a read and review session. You can mark important pages with sticky notes or dog-eared corners. You might want to note some of them in your current journal, as a year-end assessment.
And I’d be very interested to know . . .
What kind of journals you like best?
What gift does journaling give your life and your writing?