Images of Broken Light

I want to tell you about a technique that I have been using in order to replace journalling, which I have found does not work very well with me. This technique is similar to journalling, but has a few important differences. Both “stream of consciousness writing” and journalling have the emotional and “From the Heart” aspect to it, where the feeling is important, perhaps even more than the content. Both allow you to sort out, and put down on paper [or computer] what you are thinking and feeling at the time.

I have never been a fan of the Steve Pavlina school of journalling, whereby it is used as a problem solving tool. I believe that it is better not to think of it as a tool for problem solving, but rather as a means of expression. That is not to say that it cannot or should not be used in that manner, but that I have found that it is better (in spite of what Steve says on this subject) to actually go back and read what you have written. Sometimes I find something in there that I never noticed whilst I was writing. However, there are no “Journal Police”, to paraphrase a popular expression, so I wouldn’t recommend that you take what I have said here as an absolute. There is a lot of scope for manoeuvre on this.

I should probably tell you what is different from the standard sort of journal keeping that is normally(?) done, at least from what I’ve read about it. Firstly, I should point out that I am using Tomboy as the note taking application, which probably makes it a little bit different from conventional journals already, in that hyperlinking is supported, as well as various means of categorising the notes thus created. The major difference between journalling and the “stream of consciousness” that flows from my typing is that revision of the notes is perfectly legitimate thing to do. However, there are some caveats to the way that I handle this, which can probably be surmised from the title of this post.

There are two steps in the process, both of which are vital for the process to work successfully. They are detailed below.

Write for a reasonable length of time.

I have no idea on what the optimal amount of time is for this writing stage; typically I would try around 8 minutes to start with, and adjust it based on your personal experience. I have found that 8 minutes provides ample time to start the creative juices flowing. The rule for this stage is that you must be continually writing, with no major thought breaks, and no keyboard breaks (Does this break health and safety rules?). If you stop during this time, you may not fully be in “The Zone” by the time you finish.

Revise the writing you have made.

The revisions that you make must be made straight after the writing, and should last for a similar amount of time. You should not correct any spelling mistakes at this point, or grammatical errors, as there probably won’t be time to do it at this stage. If you want to add any substantial text into the document, you should do this now, rather than later, as you may very well lose the essence of what you were meaning to say. The revision at this stage does not not need to be perfect, just to make sure that nothing that you still wanted to get out, but were unable to do so during the continuous writing phase, has been missed due to not being able to pause and think of how you wanted to phrase it.

That is the entire process.

You now have a “journal entry”, “stream of consciousness” or whatever you want to call it. You are now at liberty to decide what should be done with the entry; maybe it can be turned into a blog post with some extra revision and thought, maybe you decide that you just want to delete it, or keep it for later review. Whatever you do with it should be your decision, not mine, as this is not some big fat rule book telling you how to live your life.

I would be interested in hearing if anybody tries this technique, the results they get, and what people’s thoughts are on this.