This essay first appeared in slightly different form in The Diarist’s Journal, Volume II, Issue #2

The first week of my first graduate poetry-writing workshop at the University of Washington, our teacher William Matthews came to class in paint-stained clothes.  A new arrival at the University, he was just moving into his house on Seattle’s Capitol Hill near the University District. Although he was dressed very casually and seemed as if he’d hurried off to class at the last minute, when he talked to us about poetry, his words were the most elegant I’d heard on the subject.

I had only recently learned not to throw away my first attempts at poems.  Now I kept them and worked from them. As I wrote for Matthews’ class, I kept hardbound notebooks on whose pages there were lines and stanzas and arrows pointing to how I thought I should rearrange things; then there were neatly copied-over versions of poems with the changes incorporated.  I didn’t consider this notebook a journal.  I was just being conscientious about doing my work the way one of my classmates, who had published, did hers.

One day in class, Matthews told us that he continued to show his early drafts to “trusted readers.” He often actually mailed his work to them even if they were living in the same city.  He said the formality of receiving the work and the suggestions by mail helped him revise his poems. Accomplished poets asking others to read their drafts?  Accomplished poets having drafts rather than fully developed poems right at the get-go? Didn’t the greats’ poems come directly from the muse to the page, with no changes necessary?  It didn’t really dawn on me that our famous workshop leaders were able to help us through the development of our poems because they themselves had worked their way through version after version!

I had a great writer letting me know that the people I called “important” writers might actually have something like the hardbound workbook I was creating for class.  I guess all this time I had been applying some rule out of elementary school–you know, that teachers inhabit a different world than their students, that although students learn by doing drafts and revisions, real writers (and therefore our teachers) didn’t do this.

 Several years after I had graduated with a Masters in Creative Writing, published poetry and written instructional books on writing, my agent hooked me up with an editor who wanted a book on journaling that was “something different” than the books already out there. As I began dreaming up a proposal, I remembered that day in class when Matthews told us about having trusted first readers and getting their response. I realized that doing this book on journaling could help me learn more about what Matthews (and other well known writers) did behind the scenes in developing their writing.  I would ask writers to contribute sample journal entries if they had them and words of wisdom on journaling. I asked William Matthews, Stanley Plumly, Ron Carlson, and Maxine Kumin, who had all been teachers of mine, if they would contribute to such a collection if I got the contract to put it together. I told them I envisioned many contemporary writers offering such samples of their non-published private writing and essays about how they use the journal as a tool for improving their craft.  They all said yes, and I proposed the book. Next the editor said yes to my proposal, and I received a contract to create the manuscript. I wrote to authors who I had heard speak at conferences, to authors whose work I’d read and admired, to authors that my editor had worked with and admired, as well as to some of my peers who had published. I got to read journal entries by novelists, playwrights, poets, and writers of creative nonfiction and fiction.  The material they included fascinated me, as did what they said they used this kind of writing for.  Novelist Lisa Shea wrote word meditations, author Ilan Stavans got out all of his grumping about the political side of getting recognized, Denise Levertov meditated on exhibits she’d seen and books she’d read, Janice Eidus, Pam Houston and Fenton Johnson wrote letters as a journal, Ron Carlson kept numbered lists of witty descriptions, Robert Hellenga wrote about his travels in Italy, the country he would set a novel in.  Robin Hemley and Steven Winn recounted dreams.  Stanley Plumly, Brenda Hillman and Linda Bierds kept notebooks of poem revisions. The purposes of their journals and the writing in them helped me revise my thinking on journaling. After compiling The Writer’s Journal: 40 Contemporary Writers and Their Journals, I felt like I had entered the inner circle of creativity.  I felt like I had many strategies and many reasons to write and keep that writing whether or not I knew what I was doing with it or how long it might take me to figure that out.

I realized that my notebooks of revision attempts and, by this time, my box of poem starts on scraps of paper were kinds of writer’s journals. I learned that whether I maintained an email correspondence, wrote letters I’d never send or letters I did send, went off on some tangent out of strong feeling, did a writing exercise, or tried to get down the exact quality of light at sunrise, I was keeping a journal if I kept the writing.  Aside from my hardbound books of drafts, images and intriguing lines, I hadn’t thought of myself as keeping a journal in the strict sense since I filled in my little pink vinyl covered diary with that flimsy lock and key when I was eleven.  I had kept baby books for my two children and made a few memory books, but my own journal wasn’t something I realized I was doing. Now I had all of these writers’ ways and habits at my fingertips. I began to assemble what I wrote when I “wasn’t really writing.” I knew that the words and strategies had value to me because they kept me writing and might be useful for future mining.  To keep these scribblings, I eventually settled on a box as well as computer files.

The Writer’s Journal eventually went out of print, but I was able to use 15 of the original 40 writers’ journal entries in a new book called Keeping a Journal You Love for Writer’s Digest Books. I wanted to share the insights I’d gleaned from the sample journal entries with writers who are beginning to keep journals as well as with those who have journaled for years.  Further, I wanted to articulate what I saw as the writers’ very original strategies so I could help people stir up the pot of their own journal keeping. Now I teach classes from these books and many have learned new ways to come to the page.  We can sound witty like Ron Carlson by following his phrasing or imagine ourselves fully in love while writing love letters like Pam Houston does. We can believe we are full of story like Steven Winn, who upon waking imagines characters inspired by a dream.  We can use a journal to record and meditate on a process as David Mas Masumoto does when he chronicles growing oranges, and, like Robert Hellenga, we can find out how a trip journal (even one about a walk in our neighborhood) might indicate a setting and events for a story.

I enjoy the opportunity of hearing entries in the making and of witnessing the emotional growth of individuals using the skills of creative writing. My students find out early that the well-known writers they admire put all kinds of things down on the page to keep themselves writing.  They describe something secret about their grandparents. They write about writing assignments they received and show the writing they did that didn’t fulfill the assignment.  My students look into writers’ journals to imitate strategies that will help them access surprising parts of themselves and put those selves on the page.

Reading the journal entries of the greats reminds us that inspiration is not always clothed in elegance, it often arrives informally attired.