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Keeping a journal can be a useful tool when you are writing your memoir. When keeping a regular journal, some people feel a release of energy they don’t have in other writing forms.
Journal Keeping Benefits
When keeping a journal—regular (even daily), some people feel a release of energy they don’t have in other writing forms. Because of that, journal keeping can be an important developmental experience for you both as a person and as a writer. Because the journal is private by definition, you can write in it without fear of how an audience might react. No one will ever see it. Not ever—unless you want them to!
Your journal is a kind of writing laboratory. Scientists use a laboratory to conduct experiments. They check what results from adding this to that, from changing relationships and quantities and sequences. Sometimes when the results are interesting and prove worth pursuing, they continue conducting experiments in similar areas, pairing these findings with those from other experiments.
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Yes, and another thing, it is an invaluable resource in writing memoir. I came across a few journals from 1970 that helped me recall events from that period – one scene in my memoir involves a dream and an interpretation from my therapist that I had totally forgotten until I read it in the journal. I also had a few prophetic writings (in my journal entries) that came true many years later.
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Thanks for posting.
I have found my journal to have many memory prompts. Sometimes, as you say was true for you, I’ll read an entry containing material that has completely slipped out of mind. “So I was doing that then?” I’ll think. Other times, my journal helps me to pin point dates and who was there. Our unaided memories rearrange facts according to how we need the facts to be at this point in our lives. We need back up and our memories are too often willing accomplices. The journal can keep one honest.
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