I don't know about you, but I have always struggled with journaling. Yet, every therapist or book I have read has recommended journaling as a mindfulness exercise. If there is one holy grail of therapy, it's journaling. And yet I have never found myself able to do it for more than about a week. It's not even about building the habit. The longest I have been able to keep a diary was back in high school when I wrote it in a different alphabet, but even that didn't last. To me, journaling always felt weird, often unsafe, always pointless.
One day, I told my therapist that I had written down my recurring nightmares and turned them into a play with the premise of people sharing their nightmares to help each other out. I realised then that was my form of journaling. I had actually been doing it since I was like 14. I would play these role-playing games on online forums, taking on characters and writing paragraphs upon paragraphs0, collectively playing out scenarios with stranger on the internet. It was both a form of escapism, and of writing about emotions I couldn't express in real life. I had found a freedom to express myself, one that I could not through journaling.
The Hemingway writing advice of "Write one true sentence" works because that is the base of good fiction. The events may not be real, but the more I read, the more I believe that people cannot write what they don't know. After all how can we describe something if we have never experienced it. When I wrote something and was proud of the results, I didn't name the feelings my characters were feeling, but described how those feelings felt within me. I may not have experienced anxiety over the same things my characters have felt, but I sure have experienced anxiety.
Writing something true, doesn't mean only writing something that has happened. I have never experienced a stroke, yet I was able to write a character that has. As the feelings were true. That character was an outlet for me express my anxiety over being unable to communicate. As well as my fear of being a burden and the conflict with wanting to be taken care of. Even when the circumstances are invented, the emotional truth remains.
Talking about what happened to me in a journal never felt really safe. I got into trouble over it a few times, if I recall. Over time, I became more reserved in what I shared with others. I became paranoid of misrepresenting the truth1. And became scared of sharing my experience in case it unfairly2 painted somebody in a bad light.
Writing all those things in fiction has freed me of that pressure. So what if I don't get the details completely right? It's fiction. So what if I change some details because they work better with the plot line or the joke? It's fiction. In fact, some details were changed specifically to bring about that safety of fiction. And sometimes it's not even about what happened, but what I needed to happen. Because in fiction we can actually have happy endings, if we want them. As someone who's fiercely hyper-independent3, fiction has allowed me to safely explore my needs. Something that was never safe in real life.
Just because it never happened, it didn't make it any less true.
A few years back, I picked up the habit again, having stopped in university. I started writing a story to deal with my recurring nightmares at the time. I built the characters, planned the ending and the relationships between the characters, and then I got stuck. The characters did not want to play the way I wanted them to, I was trying to tell a story, and it just wasn't working. I eventually stopped, focused on other things. A year later4, I realised why the characters did not work. I had based them on my relationship at the time, in a way they predicted my breakup long before I did. When I wanted to write the husband character as supportive using my partner as a model, it didn't work, because my partner was not supportive. I wanted the character to end up happy with her partner, when that same partner did nothing but complain at how inconvenient her problems were to him, pushing her to find solutions on her own. It took me getting out of the relationship and many therapy sessions to be able to see and admit that I was in an abusive relationship. My characters had figured it long before that when they refused to let me make the story work.
I believe writing these stories in almost third person, gives us an outside perspective of our own problems. Sort of like the "if this was your friend, what would you tell them?" approach to a problem. Sometimes it's intentional, and it gets me thinking about what I would want for those characters. But sometimes it't not, and that's when they don't want to play nice. Sometimes, something I am trying over and over again just isn't working. I learned that those are the points when I need to stop and reevaluate my life and my experience. Because, ultimately, they are catching onto a lack of self-awareness or some cognitive dissonance on my part. If my characters don't want to interact the way I want them to, they're telling me I am probably lying to myself. In my experience, if I let them, the characters will carry the story, often in better places than I could have ever intended. And along the way they will tell me what I want or need. Even when I cannot see it myself at first.
No. Nobody ever has to read it.
Some of the fiction I wrote will never see the light of day. It was written entirely for my own self-indulgence. In fact, some of it ended up being used to start a fire5.
Some of the fiction I did was in the context of role-playing games with friends6, which means people were witness to it, but the story disappeared as quickly as it was created.
And yes, I also did post some of the short stories that I have written7. And I hope one day I will have written and published full length novels. But I don't need that to happen to continue writing.
So, if you too struggle with journaling, maybe journaling may not be for you. Try fiction.
Start with one true sentence, and see where that takes you. The rest need not be true.
For some more practical suggestions here's a few options you could try:
And if you do end up writing because of this post and want to share, message me because I would love to read it.
I am an ICF coach and work with enabling my clients to reach their goals through growth. Feel free to read more about it here and book a free intro call to discuss what coaching can do for you.
0 Likely the main reason why my English is where it is today. So it was certainly educational, if not questionable in content at times.
1 Whatever that means considering how subjective our experience of the world is...
2 Or even fairly.
3 Out of necessity, not choice.
4 Or was it two?
5 In a fireplace, I do not commit arson.
6 Think Dungeons & Dragons, but not necessarily restricted to that storyline or system.
7 Under a pen name.
8 Warning, not all D&D groups are created equal. Some can be extremely toxic.