Journaler's Routine

Part one of a new summer series

Today I’m kicking off a new summer series in collaboration with Random House called the Journaler’s Routine—a twist on their much-beloved Writer’s Routine.

Over the last few months, I’ve gotten so many messages from readers telling me that The Book of Alchemy has sparked something good—a sense of courage, new creative connections and peregrinations, a fresh approach to keeping a journal.

Just last week, it was this in the comments section, from Becky: “I have been routinely reading your Alchemy book and writing daily, which I have never done before. My writing is not anything great, but I am celebrating picking up a pen and putting it on the page. I realize how much I need routines to move forward. I have been home for six weeks after a surgery and I have a new appreciation for all who struggle with chronic illness and pain. It is hard to feel limited and find ways to renew.”

It is hard to feel limited. It is hard to find ways to renew. I feel these words in my bones, as I struggle to get back in my own routine after a whirlwind few months. And so in this summer series, I’ll be asking writers and artists from The Book of Alchemy to share their journaler’s routine.

Today we begin with mine.

---

What does your journaling routine look like when it's at its most gratifying? Do you have a favorite place, time of day, or ritual that helps you journal?

Journaling, for me, is most gratifying when I’m doing it daily. Also when I’m aiming for three pages, which is long enough to write through the brain fog, to push beyond the surface of things and arrive somewhere unexpected and interesting. I love that moment when I think I’ve run out of things to say, and suddenly something floats up to the surface from deep in my subconscious. It’s so satisfying.

I’ve always been partial to journaling very early in the morning. I like those moments of quiet before the rest of my house is awake and before the world is awake—before emails, phone calls, and text messages start to filter in. I like to cozy up on the couch or in the overstuffed armchair in my office with my three dogs nestled beside me.

When did you start keeping a journal, and what inspired you to begin?

I began keeping a journal as soon as I could hold a pen. My family moved a lot when I was young, and I’d get a fresh journal when I started at a new school. As a kid who felt like a misfit, the journal was both a hiding place and a finding place. It represented possibility—on the page I could reimagine who I was. I could reinvent myself as often as I needed.

Is consistency important to you? What helps you return to the page?

Like with exercise, I believe you reap the true benefits of journaling when you’re consistent. Inevitably I lapse, and what gets me back is a low barrier to entry—so if all I manage is a few sentences, I consider it a win. I avoid an all-or-nothing approach (often that leads to nothing). I try to journal at the same time each day and pair it with a non-negotiable. Journaling as I sip my coffee works as a little Pavlovian trick; I go to sleep dreaming about that first cup, so journaling becomes something I also look forward to.

Can you share a moment when keeping a journal unlocked something for you, personally or creatively?

When I got my book deal for my memoir Between Two Kingdoms, I was elated—it had been my dream for years. But with that privilege came an all-consuming imposter syndrome that made writing nearly impossible. I couldn’t experiment or play. I lost my sense of creative freedom. I wouldn’t allow myself to take off in whatever direction, trusting that you often have to go down the wrong path to find the right one.

My laptop also posed a problem. For every word I wrote, I deleted two, and there were distractions like email and social media. I felt vulnerable and exposed, so I switched to my journal. Writing by hand, I was less likely to self-edit (only so much crossing out you can do). I could be messy and take creative risks—because it didn’t count. The journal embodied an important lesson for me: There is the draft you write for yourself, the draft you share with the world, and many drafts in between.

What’s your favorite journal and writing utensil?

I collect journals when I travel, so in my stacks of old journals, I have everything from leather-bound beauties to drug-store composition books to a blue notebook that’s standard for school kids in Greece. I’ve gone from lined paper to grid to dots; my go-to for the last several years has been our very own Isolation Journals notebook or a medium-sized Leuchtturm with dotted pages. But currently I’m in the process of designing my dream journal, and I want it to be as capacious as possible—to really emphasize this notion that the journal can contain anything. As for my favorite pen, it’s a medium nib, refillable fountain pen by Lamy. It writes so smoothly and beautifully, and it makes me feel delightfully analog to have an inkwell on my desk.

Do you reread old journal entries? Why or why not?

I generally don’t reread old journal entries. There were periods in my life that I made it a rule not to go back, because it was very important to me that I not be precious about the writing. Again, it’s about keeping that barrier to entry very low: I don’t want to be concerned about writing beautifully or even grammatically, and not rereading really helps in that regard. That being said, for my first book and my most recent one, The Book of Alchemy, I did go back and read journals as source material—to reanimate and fact-check memories.

However, I do love reading other people’s journals—in a sanctioned way, of course! Some of my favorite books are the published journals of artists and writers I love, like Frida Kahlo, Audre Lorde, Anaïs Nin, Susan Sontag and Virginia Woolf. It’s both fascinating and instructive to encounter them in that private space, revealing their unvarnished, unedited, fully human selves.

If your journals were read posthumously, what, if anything, would you want destroyed?

I’m tempted to say destroy everything—or at least lock them up in a vault that only gets unsealed after everyone I know and love and who could be potentially unsettled, dismayed, or hurt is gone. But then I think about how much I love reading the journals not only of famous writers, but also the journals of people who weren’t famous, like Anne Frank, or my mother, who let me read selections of her journals when I was writing my memoir. What a privilege it is to get a glimpse into a moment in time and a person’s interior world. What a joy to be in such intimate company.

So rather than destroying them or sealing them up, I think I’d appoint my best friend, Lizzie, to be the arbiter and curator of my journals’ afterlife. She’s the best, toughest editor, and I would trust her to discern what was interesting and what was unnecessarily hurtful, to sort what would be boring from what might be valuable. I love the idea of having a trusted keeper and reader who can determine what, if anything, should be destroyed—and what should live on.