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The Benefits of Journal Writing

by: David Hoss

Everyday we experience many different events. Some good, some bad, some memorable and some that can be forgotten the next day. For writers, these events of our lives are a treasure trove of material that could be very valuable to us.

You just had a fight with your mother? Why not write it down?
You just broke your leg? Why not sit down and scribble a few lines describing how it feels?

Through journal writing, we can not only understand the events that occur in our lives better, we can improve our writing ability and create an immense archive of events we could use in our writings.

The many benefits to writing your own journal.

Writing in a journal is a simple practice. It doesn't take any special writing abilities or any degrees, all it takes is a notepad and a pencil. It can be done before you go to bed or after you sleep to recap the previous day.

Journal writing helps to keep the writer occupied with writing. With journal writing, you will always have something to practice writing with, something that is simple to practice and something that will help you to be more active in other writings. As with freewriting, journal writing is another good prevention against writer's block and boredom. Including journal writing in your writing schedule can help to create variety in your work.

Journal writing can help to promote memory, when you constantly remind yourself of what occured during the day, you increase your attention to the details of your life and the events that occur within it. The more you use your mind and the more you pay attention to the events that occur, the easier it is to remember them.

Journal writing and improve a person's spelling and attention to the details of a sentence. As with any pratice, the more you continue on it the better you will become. Even if you are terrible, if you practice enough you will eventually have far better handwriting and spelling.

Journal writing allows us to deal with the issues in our life in a more observant and less frantic perception. When we write in our journals, we allow ourselves to let go of the issues that occur in our lives and instead place them in the notebook, ready to be dealt with when we are more capable or more understanding.

As with freewriting, journal writing is an excellent form of brainstorming. Journal writing allows us to focus more and pay more attention to our ideas. You could be talking about your dad yelling at you and suddenly come up with an idea for a book on a woman who must deal with her abusive father.
Through journal writing, we allow ourselves to brainstorm without even really realizing it. And that is always a good thing, atleast to me.

Journal power, or how I learned to write my own journal.

Journal writing is one of the easiest activities to perform. You don't need a fancy notebooks. A simple notepad will suffice. I personally use OMNI. I find they make me feel right at home writing on them. Then again, you don't even need a notepad. If you have a pc you can create a file for your journal. This is good for those who get wrist cramps from writing with the traditional notepad and pencil.

With journal writing, your aim is to simply describe the events of the day, your thoughts and the actions of others. The special and not so special events in your day. The mundane or special, they are all potential material for your journal.

Here is the tricky part. You have to sit down and write. Talking about it and wondering what to write down is not journal writing. It is only when you actually sit down and start writing the events of your day that you are journal writing.

Since this journal is just for you, it doesn't have to be spelled perfectly or even be neat if you can read not so great handwriting. As you continue to write, you will improve in both spelling and handwriting.

Keep on with it and by the time you've worn the journal out, you will be more observant, more skilled in writing and detail, and you will have a stronger grasp on the world around you.

Every story has to end. Closing.

Journal writing can be tedious or it can be a wonderfully fulfilling experience. It's all in what you make of it. The journal is your personal canvas to describing the events of your world and your life. You are the main character. Enjoy your story.

About the author:

David is a freelance writer who is enthusiastic about writing. He is also the webmaster for http://midnightlibrary.net/

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