What would I tell myself when I was just starting art? Easy. Keep a journal or blog that documents everything to do with your art practice. And yes, be bold. Call it your practice. This is no hobby.
I don’t journal. Interesting, seeing as I wrote a book about journal-keeping. I had two bad experiences that scarred me.
#1: When I was i high school, I did something I could’ve gotten arrested for. Twice. It was very dangerous, looking back The first time, my mom read about it in my journal. I got in big trouble, because, in my mom’s words, she wished it was her and her friends. Sometimes my mom doesn’t make sense. I ended up ripping all the pages out and flushing them down the toilet.
#2: After something tragic happened to me junior year, I launched into a manic episode worthy of a mental hospital. My main symptom? I couldn’t stop writing in a stream-of-consciousness notebook. A lot of it was poetry. When my dad picked me up from the hospital, he gave me a flip camera. You know, a cheap little video camera. He said, “Now you won’t have to write everything down.”
Both journaling experiences were fuel for my first novel, Hey, Joey Journal. This is the only drawing I did of Rosie:
I do sometimes write poetry in notebooks, but I cannot keep a journal. I cannot. I wrote blogs for much of my early twenties, which I plan to write an essay about at some point. My popular blog crashed and I never revived it. I have only blogged more this past year. I have my subject. Art. I have so many ideas for this blog. So many stories. And now I’m logging my practice. This is very therapeutic.
If you want to log your practice, you don’t have to blog it. Get yourself a fancy notebook from Barnes and Noble, and log away. This goes for whatever your interest is. Your life’s work needs detailing. Pretend you’re being interviewed. That’s how I come up with ideas. I steal questions from podcasts as prompts. Who knows? Maybe I’ll start journaling again. I make it sound so lovely.
My mentor has a great blog about her life and writing practice. She is a popular writer who I now call a good friend. While editing my book, she always seemed stuck on a childhood memory. Like me, her mom read her journal. She said she couldn’t journal because she always felt eyes over her shoulder. She swore she’d never write a journal after that. However, she threw herself into a blog during a tough year. She thought she would only blog for that year. That was 2016. Here we are. 2026. It transformed her and that year got made into a book. If you’re afraid of journaling, try it our way. I don’t know why it’s easier to be public with our essays. It just works. Check out Kathie’s blog. She is a stellar writer. It’s called This Week’s Moment of Happiness Despite the News.
https://kathiegiorgio.org/blog
If you’d like to read Hey, Joey Journal, click this link:
Interested in neither? Maybe this next one will get you.