Why Writers Should Keep a Daily Journal

Gayle Kennedy
2 min readMay 22, 2024

Harnessing ten minutes a day will change your life, I promise.

Image created by OpenAI’s ChatGPT

As writers, the seemingly simple act of writing regularly can be a daunting challenge.

The answer?

Ten minutes a day.

Committing just ten minutes a day to writing can transform your creative practice.

The Power of Getting Your Butt In The Chair

During my time at Sarah Lawrence College, a creative writing professor introduced us to a transformative exercise: maintaining a daily journal.

Unlike Julia Cameron’s morning pages (which have their use, don’t get me wrong), this was a different approach.

Instead of filling three lined pages of 8X11, he asked that we buy a much smaller composition notebook.

And, a good pen.

With this, we were to commit to writing one page every day.

One rule was constant: we were to write about the events of the previous day, not our thoughts about them.

This method, he explained, helps preserve memories more vividly: “If you focus solely on your thoughts, you might forget the events. If you document the events, you’ll naturally recall the thoughts.”

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Gayle Kennedy

I write about writing, finding inspriation from novels and art, and how to fit writing into busy lives. Copywriter by day. PT PhD student. @fledglingwriter