Journalling Thoughts
Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 6:48 I am going to try a change in my journalling method. Instead of writing three pages of longhand, which takes me about 35 minutes, I am going to write in three bursts of ten minutes on my computer. I don’t intend that there should a gap of more than a minute or so between the writing bursts because what I am trying to achieve is a greater focus.
Of course the usual rules about journaling will apply. No going back or correcting. Keep writing and don’t think. And above all I must resist the temptation to think about how it might look if I published it in the blog. In any case I have absolutely no intention of publishing more than the occasional extract.
There’s quite a different dynamic between handwriting and writing on the computer. Some people say that one should write with the screen switched off so that you can’t look back and see what you have written. I think that’s taking it a bit to the extreme - on the few occasions that I have tried it I have found it rather disconcerting. It results in a lot of uncorrected mistakes of course, but also there is a sense of being in darkness, of wandering around without being able to see one’s way. The results aren’t too bad though once they have been edited. But I don’t really like doing it that way.
I prefer to type on a screen where I can see what I am writing. It helps me to keep some sort of shape and focus. The one thing that must be borne firmly in mind is that editing must be left until afterwards. If something comes out of the journalling which seems worth preserving, then it should be reshaped later, not at the time of writing. Writing and editing are two separate operations which should be carried out at two separate times.
I’m now wondering if be better to write several ten minute bursts throughout the day? A ten minute article or thought is just about the right length for a blog posting, and for a longer article one can always string several together.
Reader Comments (6)
So, the benefits you got from journalling by hand for 35 minutes may elude you if you're typing in 10-minute bursts. But other benefits may accrue, so I'm interested in the long-term outcome of this experiment.
I am quite clear that I am *both* journalling for myself and to produce articles for my website/blog/etc. I have frequently had ideas during journalling which later find their way into the public gaze. However because they are in longhand, I have to type them all out. And because the 35 minutes it usually takes me to write three pages is relatively unfocussed I have to do a lot more editing too.
However like most things I try, this is an experiment. I am not wedded to it forever if it doesn't work out!
Mark
I think you are absolutely right to say that the results will be different. Typing has a quite different dynamic from longhand, and 10 minute bursts are quite different from 35 minutes too.
What I'm interested in finding out is whether the differences are beneficial or not.
Mark
I predict shorter bursts may inhibit deeper understandings of a topic because not enough time has been spent laying down those tracks in your neural pathways. You wrote somewhere about how you felt that you thought *differently* after a year of the 3-pg journalling, and that has stuck with me, for some reason. I also predict you won't see that kind of change with the 10-min sprints (but that kind of change probably isn't needed at this point in your personal development).
The value of freewriting for a long period for me is that it burns all the trash out of my system so that the good stuff (if there is any) really does shine out. (I write fiction as a hobby and the process is similar there.)
Thanks for providing a place where folks like us can ruminate about these issues (though I think chatting about it in a pub would be more fun!).