What Does It Take - Talent, Persistence Or A Journal?

Ryshia Kennie

It all began as a Christmas present. Before that, the thought of keeping a journal was up there with cleaning the cobwebs out of the basement rafters. But there it was pages and pages of pristine white-lined paper - - a journal! What was I going to do with it?

I thumbed through the pages. Admired the softly padded, pastel cover and realized it was just additional clutter. I had no use for it. Don’t get me wrong – I love paper, love ink. I collect it. Store it. Have way too much of it, and never use it. The last time I kept a diary I was nine. We won’t discuss the year.

So back to the journal, somehow it caught my attention as I cleaned up the remnants of Christmas recently past. Surely there was something I could use it for, short of actually recording the events of my life. With the exception of travel journals, I don’t journal, that’s too organized. Creativity cannot be boxed or in this case journaled. Or so I thought.

Still I agonized. It was a shame to waste such a useless gift. The beautiful cover and haunting reams of empty paper called to me like a novel I’d never read. It was something pretty to stash in my already overcrowded office for future, never to be used, use.

Earlier in the year I’d started a business plan with the intention of having a fully completed, multi page document by the end of the year. That goal seemed too intimidating to say the least. But I thought of my big picture goals often, to build an inventory of manuscripts, to develop a business plan, to get organized. And I continued to do nothing about them. These thoughts ran through my mind as I vacuumed bits of wrapping paper from beneath the couch and then my eyes locked with the lovely, spanking new journal. Maybe I didn’t need a super complicated plan!

And so began the journal.

January 1, 2007 , I opened that pretty little book to page one – took out my purple gel pen – hey, if you’re going to work out of character – go all the way – and wrote my writing goals for the year. There were exactly six of them, six lines, that’s it. I’d vowed to keep this thing simple. And I wrote that first day of 2007, that and every day after, recording each word count and writing related activity in short sound bits of words. It was the first New Year’s resolution that I kept – ever.

That is how journaling came to me and what a treasure it has been, so far. Before the journal, writing goals were something I made every month and every year, and then forgot or allowed to drift, the same goals reappearing month after month.

Do you make goals? Find yourself scrounging through paper or worse, the postings to various groups in cyberspace, trying to remember what your writing goals were? Have you given up and just assumed that as usual it probably doesn’t matter what the goals were because you didn’t complete them anyway? Not saying that you’re not working hard. Maybe, like me, you’re just not focused.

The journal focused me. Because I’m writing in longhand, the points are short. The journal sits by my laptop and at the end of every writing session I jot down what I’ve accomplished. At the beginning of each month I write a short bullet list of goals for the month and then day-by-day I enter short point descriptions of what I’ve done. It’s never more than three or four lines. At the end of the month I tally up what I’ve completed and if the goals were met or not. And so it goes each month. It takes little time and is one of the most powerful tools I have and, it’s addictive! I’ve even gotten more ambitious and mapped out a plan for the year. Again, only short bullets of words. But going back on the day to day and matching that against the monthly goals I can see where the time is wasted, see how going out with friends on a workday evening can blow an entire writing day. Not that I’m reining in my social life, but now I’ll plan ahead; and on Sunday afternoon I’ll spend an extra hour writing because I know on Thursday I’m going out and that means no writing.

Now I’m meeting my goals. I can see where too much time spent on one activity such as updating a website impacts my writing. The journal is my red alert. It helps me create balance and forward momentum as my daily persistence has finally created the writing habit. Marrying the two together, persistence and journal, was the best thing I ever did for my writing career.

I’ve accomplished more in the first half of 2007 as I work toward publication then in any other year. I’d like to say it’s my newfound determination but I really have to admit that it’s the journal. Journaling has fine-tuned my persistence. When another rejection threatens to steal a day’s writing, the journal reminds me how much I’ve accomplished and how little the rejection really means. It reminds me to keep writing.

Some day when I’m interviewed on Regis and Kelly I’ll have to give all the credit to my journal. And you can too if you get started today. Now, let’s open up that journal and begin. Let the purple ink flow!