RESOURCES | By Cheryl Antao-Xavier  »  Of all the how-to’s I’ve heard on getting the creative juices flowing, jumpstarting the Muse, the one that stuck in this otherwise transient memory is something a writing teacher at Ryerson insisted upon: “Keep a journal!” he said. Or otherwise don’t come to my class is what he implied. 

Every day we had to pen a paragraph, a page, or if really inspired—a full-blown article, about something, anything that we saw, felt, experienced, thought off during the day. There had to be an entry for each day, even if you sat the night before the class and wrote out seven entries.

Being one of the ‘night-before-class’ journal-ists, I began each entry, totally peeved at first, trying to think back through the preceding week to find something, anything, journal-worthy. Living at the time in downtown TO, I used the TTC, walked through scenic and shabby neighbourhoods to get about. Story ideas abounded.

And then it happened. I started noticing things, people, little bits of nothing that sparked a thought, an idea—a potential journal-entry. I watched people, surreptitiously of course, and wondered about them, their expressions or lack of them spoke volumes to my, by now, really pumped up curiosity.  The journal entries started taking a literary turn as the dormant fiction writer sat on the lap of the journalist and whispered weird fantasies into a highly receptive ear.

The teacher collected our journals every class, wrote comments on each entry and returned them the following week. He suggested about half way through the course that we write every day and not all entries in one go. I guess I was not the only ‘night-before journalist.’ Great advice. For I learned in writing every day, I brought a different perspective, tone, angle, whatever, to each piece. I was able to capture the immediacy of the event or experience. Each piece sounded fresh, even powerful, albeit to my biased ear. 

Journaling had become a cathartic experience as well, and a lot of pent up frustrations were vented on to paper.

Its been many years since that creative writing course, but the striving for great story ideas and the plague of writer’s block has persisted. The journal writing ceased, restarted, ceased again, many times. My method of journaling evolved from scraps of paper to a doc file on my desktop. 

The habits borne out of that simple exercise have thankfully become almost second nature. It’s been a great way to get the introspective writer out of one’s head to focus on the world around: from whence shall come the inspiration, please God.

It works. Try it. Keep a journal.