Guest Blogger Shares A Powerful Tool For Writers

Vickie Guillot

Vickie Guillot, our Guest Blogger, knows a lot about journaling for writers. Today, she is sharing some of that knowledge with us.


Journaling is a powerful tool to help you in the process of creating your poem, story or book. Statistics say if we hear something, we can recall 10 to 20 percent of the information, if we write it, we can double the information we recall, if we re-examine what we write we can double it again.
Journaling helps us to draw information out of our heads, put it before our eyes where we can group it, add to it, re-examine it and change it. Journaling will help bridge what is inside you with what is outside of you. It helps you to see your thinking, your patterns and your desires.
Let’s say you want to write a memoir. Let’s do an exercise that I will call “Own Your Life Journal”. An “Own Your Life Journal” will help you:
• heal the past
• soothe troubled memories
• heal relationships
• dignify all events in your life
• reveal and track patterns and cycles of your life
• capture family stories
• capture your life story
• balance and harmonize
I recently read an amazing memoir called Educated by Tara Westover that did all the above. Westover’s rich prose makes her story about finding herself amidst the pressures her family put on her to obey their nonconformist beliefs and her assertion to be educated an unforgettable and encouraging story. Her story was both startling and yet an ordinary development in most families. I read throughout her book that she kept a journal and referred to that journal when writing her thesis for her Ph.D. The book is a #1 New York Times bestseller. If you have not read it you are missing a beautiful piece of work.

Let’s jump right into a journaling exercise. There are no rules to journaling (except to be consistent).
BLINK. Take a deep breath and write today’s date. Take another deep breath and think about the development of your life thus far.

THINK. Be clear about the story you want to tell. Pick one major event or person from your life. If clarity is not there, wait on it and continue to find your breath. I am going to ask you a question and you will write your answer in your journal. (You can ask yourself a question when doing this exercise on your own) Don’t write what you think is politically correct, or what you think someone would want to hear. This writing is for you. How did the event or person affect your life?

INK for five minutes. Write a bit faster than normal. Don’t worry about spelling, how it sounds, or how it looks. Set your phone stopwatch on 5 minutes and do not stop writing until it goes off. If you’re stuck just make something up or keep writing to the question. Keep writing to tell your truth as fast as you can,

LINK. Now, here is the power in journaling. Read what you wrote. Examine it and write two sentences on what you wrote. You are on your way to using journaling as a tool to open your creativity. Your journal can become a friend available to listen and always remembers what you said.

BIO: Journaling is a passion project that Vickie Guillot loves sharing with others. She has used journaling for her own self-healing.  She is a journaling facilitator and a lifetime member of Higher Awareness. Check her website (linked below) for more information on journaling.

Vickie Guillot
Writing Matters