Authors at the Water Cooler: The Act of Journaling

When I was twenty or so, I tried several times to keep a diary, but I just couldn’t do it. So many things were happening around me back then that I could barely keep up with them, let alone stand still and write them all down in a notebook. And most of these things weren’t the kind that made me think, Oh, I’ve got to write this down. It was all I could do to open my eyes in the strong headwind, catch my breath, and forge ahead.

-- Men Without Women: Stories (affiliate link)

I've met many people who have started and stopped their practice of journaling. Some quit due to inconvience, others because they are afraid they have nothing to say. The only way to make it stick is to find the addiction. The need to write has to become like the urgency of breath. If you can't find the rights words, make them up.

Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.

-- The Diary of a Young Girl (affiliate link)

She was wrong! Millions of people have cried, and have vowed to become better people because they read her work.

Most twentysomethings can’t write the last sentence of their lives, but when pressed, they usually can identify things they want in their thirties or forties or sixties—or things they don’t want—and work backward from there. This is how you have your own multigenerational epic with a happy ending. This is how you live your life in real time.

-- The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now (affiliate link)

Again, you don't need to be definitive with writing. There is no conclusion to thought, merely the next thought. Writing is that. But on paper!