Organizing Your Journaling with Mari McCarthy - Guest Blogger

Welcome Mari McCarthy to the blog today.
Thanks for stopping over Mari! :)

You've been journaling for years and your collection of notebooks is now messy and disorganized. You're thinking it might be wise to set up a system that would allow you to categorize your posts. That way, they could be more easily found, and you could read entries on a given subject in simple sequence.

Or maybe you're just starting to journal and are confused by all the many approaches to the practice. Do you want to chronicle a project, set yourself a goal, dump emotions, write memories? Should you spend an hour in the morning, or ten minutes at lunch, or record your thoughts aloud as you commute? Would you prefer freestyle, or journaling that is guided by prompts?

In these or similar cases, I recommend getting organized!

Newcomers to journal writing might try a variety of themes, modes, and times for their practice, perhaps settling on one or another after a while. You might decide to journal for ten minutes just before bed, and also keep a journal that reports on your vegetable gardening, as well as a third that is two or three-sentence entries to Evernote.com whenever you get the urge during your day at the office. Experiment with many variables until you find a journaling style that really works for you.

If you're a veteran journaler, trying out a practice of keeping separate journals for separate subjects – and modes of journaling – may be rewarding.

If you normally use your journal as a way to unload emotionally, stretch yourself by adding a journal in which you write about your golf game or your children, your work or your faith. 

If you journal at a certain time of day for a certain length of time, devise an opposite mode to use for a second journal, and see if you're inspired by the exercise.

If your aim in journaling is to record what happens each day, find another notebook to use to record your dreams, or to write fantasies or play with prompts.

And so on. Possibilities are endless. And why is it helpful to organize your journaling in this way?

First, you'll apply the benefits of journaling to more areas of your life. Benefits like taking time to reflect, giving your thinking the calm analysis of writing, establishing witness to your existence, availing yourself of the inner counsel that journaling provides.

Additionally, you may find your enjoyment of those parts of life that you're journaling, to be greatly increased. Can you imagine actually looking forward to your long commute? If you can talk-journal while you drive, you might come to value that hour.

Or if you journal about making dinner for the family every evening, your enthusiasm for the job will blossom.

Or it can even happen that once you start keeping a journal about your relationship to your boss that things get miraculously easier between you. These things can occur because journaling requires reflection, which results in enhanced living.

Mari L. McCarthy, journaling therapy specialist and author, owns Create Write Now, a website dedicated to all things journaling. The site includes hundreds of journaling prompts, personal journaling stories, interviews, a blog, and many other resources. Mari publishes many ebooks and e-workbooks to help journalers accomplish amazing things. She also conducts online Challenges, and you won't want to miss her upcoming Start Journaling and Change Your Life in 7 Days Challenge, June 4-10.

Mari

I must admit Mari L. McCarthy’s book, Start Journaling and Change Your Life in 7 Days peaked my interest the first time I saw it listed. Contradicting thoughts entered my brain via the cartoon characters on each shoulder. “Lisa, you could use a one-week journey back to your journals.” While the other shoulder was skeptic, “Honestly Lisa, can one book, with a mere seven day plan really ignites fire in your journaling laziness? Doubt it.”

When the opportunity to review this book was placed before me, I was thrilled to say the least. I would be able to extinguish the little voices of reason sporting their red and white off my shoulders with my own educated opinion after reading and applying the principles of the book.

In the month the book has been in my possession, I have read it a few times. I had yet to put any of the strategies into practice but looked forward to doing so. Mari’s 7-day journey is easy to read, thought provoking, reflective, and provides a variety of ways to jump-start one’s journaling endeavor.

Her title states the book is for a one-week journey yet the book offers a month’s worth of strategies and challenges to start a fabulous writing frenzy. Mari’s reflective processes, hands-on activities, and prompts are the answer to every writer’s need for guidance.

This book is written for those just starting to journal and to motivate and rejuvenate the journal writing of veterans like myself. My first journal was during my middle school years and has morphed through the years into many styles and manners. I found Start Journaling and Change Your Life in 7 Days interesting and motivating.

As a first-born, type A personality…I have not completed the seven day challenge yet because I don’t have the time to do it “right”. Mari has provided enough material to last me a month yet once the school year is over, I look forward to taking on the one-week challenge. I like the versatility of the book. If you are in the mood for a grilling week of journaling, this is your book. If you are looking for innovative and thoughtful techniques to boost your writing (to include journaling), this book is for you.

While she has written to share the joy and reward of placing words in your journal each day, in the end, she did this AND developed a book to battle one’s writer’s block too.  Therefore, whether you have the time this week for the 7-day challenge or have a personality like myself, this book is for you. If you love to write and are looking for new ways to trigger the inner thoughts into morphing themselves into your next journal entry, article, or book then you want to read Mari’s book.

Click on Mari’s photograph above for
a direct link to her website.

Click on her book cover below for
a direct link to purchase her book.

Happy writing everyone!

Mari L. McCarthy is The Journaling Therapy Specialist, founder of Create Write Now and Journaling for the Health of It™. 

Mari offers guidance, counseling and encouragement to writers through her many journaling eBooks and in private Journaling Jumpstart consultations.

Mari’s next Start Journaling and Change Your Life in 7 Days Challenge will be June 4-10 http://www.createwritenow.com/start-journaling-workbook.

Please join her!