Writers and Their Notebooks

Baker, Nicholson. U and I: A True Story. New York: Random House, 1991.

Didion, Joan. “On Keeping a Notebook,” in Slouching toward Bethlehem. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968.

Dunlap, Louise. Undoing the Silence: Six Tools for Social Change Writing. Oakland: New Village Press, 2007.

Elbow, Peter. Writing with Power. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones. Boston: Shambala, 1996.

Junker, Howard, ed.

For me, the trick works; the words that pour onto my journal’s pages seem as separate from me as water from air. I didn’t become a regular journal keeper, nor a writer, until I was taught the technique of free-writing. From the time I was eight years old until I turned twentyeight, my journaling followed more or less the same pattern. I would keep a journal for a few weeks or months, then set it aside. When I returned to it, my words embarrassed me so much that I would bury them deep in the detritus of my closet, or shred them into silent confetti. Then, in a workshop I took on a whim, a teacher introduced me to the concept of automatic writing. I no longer felt that I had to take responsibility for whatever spilled onto the page. My not-quite-conscious mind seemed a person distinct from the self I knew.

The purpose of this journal is to record parts of my life I might otherwise forget