Megan Fuller remembers freezing as she faced her first blank page.
“I’d decided to keep a journal when my son was born,” said Fuller, 34. “But looking at that empty page put the fear of God into me.”
After a day or two of avoidance, Fuller took pen in hand and “just began to write.”
The words, she said, “just started pouring out. Anybody who’s started a journal — especially people whose journaling is based on some monumental life event — probably knows what I mean. You just have to kind of let go and let it flow.
“Most of all,” she added, “you’ve got to keep remembering that there’s nothing right or wrong about what you’re putting down. There’s no good way or bad way to keep a journal. Whatever works for you is the right way.”
Journaling — a word that, like “networking,” didn’t exist more than a decade ago — has become big business. There’s even a publication devoted to the cause: Personal Journaling, a bi-monthly magazine published by Writer’s Digest, and offers helpful tips and sometimes frightening perspectives on just what journals can and/or should do.
Journaling is to keeping a diary what hiking is to walking: It’s really the same thing, one just sounds a little more strenuous, possibly a tad more virtuous. The trend can be traced back to 1978 and a book called “The New Diary: How to Use a Journal for Self-Guidance and Expanded Creativity.”
Its author, Tristine Rainer, believed diaries were a tool of self-knowledge and personal growth accessible to everybody, unlike psychotherapy, another mass trend that cost a lot more and had to be achieved by appointment. It wasn’t a new or particularly revolutionary idea, but it caught on in a big way.
Creative Memories, a company founded in 1987 by a Montana wife and mother, found a way to tie scrapbooks to diaries, marketing systems designed to preserve family photos and memories in one attractive package. (Now a multinational corporation of direct-sales associates, Creative Memories’ parent company is the Antioch Co. of Yellow Springs.)
Scrapbooking, as it’s called, is a more complicated, less-personal form of journaling, which at its core involves one person, one pen and paper.
Journals can be kept for strictly pragmatic purposes — keeping track of innocuous subjects such as the weather or a diet — or they can hold the key to the keeper’s soul, a bound volume of thoughts, dreams and desires.
Professionals from therapists to teachers have been known to “assign” the keeping of a journal as a way for the writer to organize thoughts, analyze feelings and make sense of emotions.
“There’s something very powerful about the simple act of `writing it down,”‘ said George Froeman, a former high school English teacher living in Centerville, Ohio.
“We’re always told, `don’t put it in writing,’ or, `can I get that in writing?’ It’s like once it’s on paper, it’s true, or it has more meaning somehow. That’s the powerful part, and that’s why diaries are effective. They make people think about their thoughts, as funny as that sounds.”
Fuller acknowledges that the idea of her journal being part of her family’s legacy leads to some serious bouts of self-editing, but she feels it’s important to be as honest as possible within the boundaries of good taste and consideration for others.
“It’s more about observations on the place and time we’re living in, and what my son is all about. Funny sayings, favorite games — that sort of stuff,” she said.
There are those, of course, who eschew tangible journals altogether, preferring to type away at an Internet “blog,” a shortened form of Web log.
More Top Picks Opendyslexic Font Does It Actually Work
Now, what to write in?
DAYTON, Ohio — So you’ve made the decision to start journaling. Now it’s time to pick a journal. With thousands to choose from, that may not be as simple as it sounds.
In addition to the amazing variety of blank books available, there are also journals for special circumstances. Chronicle Books, for instance, puts out “The Rebound Journal” ($12.95) to “help you get past that idiot you thought was charming;” “Om at Home, a Yoga Journal” ($15.95) with postures designed to encourage reflection; and “The Worst Case Scenerio Survival Journal” ($12.95) filled with lifesaving tips.
On the other hand, selecting a journal can be as simple as picking up a lined yellow tablet or the familiar black-and-white marbled Mead composition book that’s been around for more than 100 years. The newest version of that best seller, by the way, is Mead’s journaling composition book. Priced at just $1.49 to $1.79, it contains half-lined, half-blank pages (for doodling) and also comes in purple, red, green and blue.
But if you’ve spent any time browsing at a bookstore, gift shop, museum or college, you’ll know there are plenty of other enticing options as well.
“Journals are like ice cream — everyone likes a different flavor,” says Michael Held, president of Michael Roger Press, a company that’s been specializing in journals for the past 20 years and produces everything from waterproof journals for the bathtub and beach to journals shaped like tea kettles, hearts and baseballs. His journals sell from $3 to $50.
— Meredith Moss