Why Journaling Matters So Much for Memoirists

The Journal Sees What the Memoir Isn’t Ready For (Yet)

A couple months ago, someone in my memoir group said she didn’t know how to journal or even where to start. I was a little stunned. It hadn’t occurred to me that journaling might need instructions.

My first thought was to say, “Just write!” But of course, that’s easier said than done, especially when you’re new to writing, or you’re carrying around a tangled, emotionally charged story, or you’re trying to decide which voice in your head to trust.

There are many different ways to journal and so many reasons for anyone to do it, but it’s especially important for memoirists.

---

The Journals I Threw Away (And Why I Wish I Hadn’t)

I journaled sporadically as an angsty teenager, but the last time I looked at those entries, it made me cringe so much that I threw them away. But now I kind of wish I hadn’t. That troubled, lonely girl isn’t who I am anymore, but she’s still a part of me. If I were ever to write about that time of my life, those journals would’ve been gold.

Journaling captures not just events but emotional truth—what things felt like in the moment. And that’s exactly what memoir depends on.

---

The Magic of Morning Pages

The book that got me back into journaling as an adult was Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. In this iconic book for artists of all types, she suggested that each day, you should write three pages of “morning pages.”

“There is no wrong way to do morning pages,” she writes.
“These daily morning meanderings are not meant to be art. Or even writing.”

Three pages, first thing in the morning, handwritten, no censor. I did it religiously for years. I was amazed how often when I’d start the day feeling stuck or anxious, unsure what was even bothering me, by the end of the third page, I not only knew why, but I felt better about it.

---

Journaling as Emotional First Aid

I think of journaling as a pressure valve. It’s the place where I let the thoughts flow onto the page, releasing their hold on my thoughts and my day. It’s where I can be messy, uncertain, nonlinear. I write it like no one will ever read it, and I think this is an important part of journaling—to write without worrying if it makes sense or tells a story, but to just put words to the chatter in your brain.

Beth Kempton, in The Way of the Fearless Writer, calls this “gaseous state writing”—a free-flowing, unfiltered phase that often comes before the more polished, “solid state” writing meant for others. I love that imagery. For me, journaling is where I get honest. It’s where I tell the truth without worrying about how it sounds.

---

Why Journaling Matters So Much for Memoirists

For memoir writers, journaling isn’t just a helpful practice—it’s one of our most valuable tools. It helps us process what’s happening in our lives and in our heads. It lets us capture events as they unfold, and maybe most importantly, it preserves the emotional truth (and specificity) of a moment—before time smooths out the edges or memory rewrites the script.

During emotionally intense times, it can be almost impossible to write something “beautiful” or polished. But journaling doesn’t ask that of us. It gives us a space to release, to make sense of the chaos, and to record details we’ll be grateful for later. That rawness, that immediacy, often holds the key to writing scenes with depth and honesty when we’re ready to come back to them.

---

Finding What Works for You

These days I’m not as devout about my morning pages, but journaling is still a vital part of my life. I use Google Docs now instead of longhand. I know there’s something powerful about pen to paper—and I still love that—but since I draw on my journaling for memoir writing, it’s important to me that my entries are searchable.

Here’s my little trick: Whenever I write something that I think I might want to come back to, I enclose it in [square brackets]. That way, I can search for those brackets and skim right past all the mental noise to find the good stuff. (By the way, I also use the square brackets when I’m in the midst of writing in my memoir and I come across something that I need to research or can’t think of the right words. I just write [find a better way to describe this emotion] or something like that so I can quickly come back to it later without getting out of the flow.)

One memoirist friend shared that she journals in bursts—scribbling notes in a pocket notebook during the bus ride to work—and then pulls those raw scraps together later.

A couple other writers I know “journal” using voice to text.

Someone else in my group loves to journal to prompts.

The format doesn’t matter. Give a few different methods a try and see what works for you.

---

Journaling Through Writer’s Block

Journaling is also one of my favorite tools for breaking writer’s block. When I don’t know where to start, I journal. I don’t aim to “write well,” I just try to get something moving. And more often than not, I discover something I do want to write about.

---

Journals Aren’t Memoirs, But They’re Invaluable

If you’ve read much on memoir, you’ve probably heard the (good) advice that a memoir shouldn’t read like a journal. And I agree. At least in my case, the stuff I journal would be far too boring or raw to serve anyone else. But journaling can absolutely inform your memoir. It captures the voice, the moment, the emotion. One of our Memoir Mentors members, Jelaine Lombardi, pulled extensively from her journals for her memoir Running Around Naked. While she edited the material heavily, her journal entries helped her authentically capture the voice of her younger self—and root her story in truth.

---

Where to Begin

If you’re not sure where to begin, prompts can help. (Let me know if you’d like me to share some favorites in a future post.) Or you can start with a phrase as simple as: “I don’t know what to say.” Sometimes that’s all it takes. The page has a way of pulling more out of us than we expected.

---

Tell Me About Your Journaling Practice

Do you keep a journal?

I’ve been thinking about adding journaling sessions to our Memoir Mentors calendar, maybe writing together with some prompts. Would that be of interest?

Has it helped your writing—or helped you through something else entirely? I’d love to hear your experience in the comments.