Process Journaling; What Is It?

Hi, it’s me, and for this post, I’ll be discussing something called process journaling.

What is Process Journaling?

What is it? Well, process journaling is writing about your writing. Metawriting, if you will.

Now, I’m sure many of you haven’t heard the term before, and I don’t blame you. I didn’t know about it until I attended that writing conference a few years ago.

I took lots of notes as the speaker went through the spiel about it, and at the first chance, I tried process journaling. I was impressed by it and kept doing it for a while.

I filled several journals and had them by my bed for quite a while.

How to Structure It

So, what you do is after finishing your story or section, you set aside some time to write down various aspects of what you have written down for whatever time frame it was. And it’s divided into different categories.

This is the structure in which I do process journaling:

• Date: Day, month, year, the usual.
• Story title: Whatever the name of your story is, or TBD if you don’t have one yet. You can also include the subtitles or series name if you wish.
• Drafting stage: Are you just starting? Draft two? Five?
• Location: Are you at home? At a park? Coffee shop? The location in which you are writing can impact how much you write.
• Mood: What I mean is what mood you’re in while you’re writing. Happy? Sad? Angry? Indifferent? Different emotional states can impact the tone of your writing.
• Summary: A quick explanation about what happened in the section of your story or the full story if it’s short.
• Theme: Is your story happy? Funny? Sad? Heartwarming? Adventurous?
• Seeds planted: Has anything been set in place for the…