Author: Rebekah Lyn

Rituals and routines. We all have them. What do you need to do before you can start to write? For years, I’ve needed to check and answer all my emails the minute I sat down at the computer. I love emails, especially letters from friends, but anything else is compulsive for me, as well.

The easiest writing I do is by hand, in my journal, stream of consciousness and venting. I can spend hours at that. Sometimes I’ll cull an idea that later becomes a blog. Then one day I was writing about journaling and I began to think about the difference between a journal and a diary. Also, I was looking forward to my grandson’s daily posts either on Face Book or in his blog because he had gone to Japan.

I do my journaling by hand because Julia Cameron suggests it in all her books, starting with, The Artist’s Way. I can’t really explain the differences. Computer writing goes fast and is not too hard, but handwriting in my journal may allow me more of a feeling of privacy and freedom.

So I decided to do both. A journal is a journey of life; a diary is a listing of the things that happened in a day. Now I’m keeping a dairy on the computer and a journal in a heavy-paper sketchbook. Why didn’t I think of that before? It’s great, it will help my production of blog posts for Writing Life on Rebekah Lyn books, and My Take on Old Things are New.

The big surprise is I feel more compelled to start with my daily diary than I do to go to email! Wow. How cool. I’m set free from yet another addiction. Today, I spent the whole morning starting with the dairy but going on to finish several posts. I’ll have to wait and see how it works with novels. But, I haven’t seen my email today, so ta, ta for now. I deserve it, don’t you agree?