The book “Writing and Being – Embracing Your Life Through Creative Journaling” by G. Lynn Nelson was recommended to me back in 2019 while I was attending a leadership seminar in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. At the time, we were discussing how to identify leadership traits, focus on personal growth, and create a purpose statement. I wrote down the recommendation on my reading list with the hope of reading it one day. It wasn’t until March 9, 2024, while reading Rebecca Cuningham’s post on her Fake Flamenco Blog, that I decided to purchase and read the book. I mentioned to her that what she wrote about “defining our key motivations and goals” caught my attention, and that I needed to work on her second point, courage. She then recommended journaling as a way to clarify our thoughts and goals.

Over my professional career, I wrote many documents describing my purpose, mission statement, vision, and short/long-term goals but never through a journaling process. Thanks to my discussion with Rebecca and this book, I’m now in the process of developing my journaling habits.

G. Lynn Nelson was a professor at Arizona State University and served as the director of the regional Greater Phoenix Area Writing Project (GPAWP). He dedicated his life to transforming the way we write and breaking barriers imposed by the American education system regarding how writing should look like.

I think his guiding purpose was beautifully expressed in the following quote, “My wish is for you to be a life-long writer. My hope is that writing will be a tool – an emotional, intellectual, and spiritual tool – to help you survive and grow and find meaning and purpose and peace in your life.” (P. XVI)

The book does a pretty good job explaining the process of journaling, and Nelson divided the book into 10 chapters: Beginning your journey, entering the river, seeking silence, letting go, centering in the self, exploring the kingdom within, writing and healing, seeking community, taking back our hearts, and a closing chapter with his final thoughts. What I really like about the book is that he includes exploration exercises, inviting readers to work on those in their journals.

Chapter one, Beginning your Journey, he describes the type of journal that you should buy and the only real criterion is “that it is something you feel comfortable writing in, something that invites you in and does not intimidate you.” (P. 1). He introduces the term, “soft eyes,” to indicate that we need to approach this journey with openness and acceptance. About the writing process, he goes on to say that “As you write in your journal, you will need to keep reminding yourself that this is not time or place to worry about things like spelling, punctuation, grammar, complete sentences, and so on. Attending to such things will only impede the process of your writing – the free and spontaneous flow of words from within you.” (P. 3) The journal is something very personal and he said that “until something from your journal wants to work its way out and into public writing, there are no rules or standards that need concern you.” (P. 4) The rest of the chapter focuses on how to start writing in your journal. Toward the end of the chapter, he said this great and helpful line, “You enter your journal not to explore what you know but to discover how you feel.” (P. 11) The chapter ends with an exploration exercise titled, “Where are you now? (Part 1 of 2). The second part of this exploration is provided in Chapter 10.

Chapters two through nine take readers through the journaling process with a lot of details and in a sense holding you by the hand. The exploration exercises are very helpful, and you will learn the concept if the reader takes the time to do those.

Here are some highlights from the book:

“Personal writing in our journals is the heart of all our writing. There, our words become tools for our psychological, intellectual, and spiritual growth. There, too, our individual insights, feelings, memories, and stories become the source of all meaningful and effective public writing – gifts from our hearts to share with others.” (P. 25)

“Writing was, in itself, a way to discover things about myself and the world. I was taught to write when I had something (public) to say, so I seldom wrote. Now, I write in my journal to find out what I have to say – so I am forever writing.” (P. 26)

“If I do not seek quietness around me, I cannot hear the words that my heart whispers. And if I do not seek silence within, I will never know the power of my words as instruments of creation.” (P. 35)

“Once your writing is grounded in its source – your heart and your journal work – once you begin to find the beauty of your own voice and the power of your own stories, you may feel a natural urge to share your writing with others.” (P. 40)

“The key to opening yourself to this world, the way to practice wondering with your words, is to avoid making absolute statements or generalizations in your journal (“The world is evil”… “My husband is wrong” … “Mondays are terrible” … “My boss is a jerk”). Instead, describe how things look right now and say how you feel right now. Make all observations tentatively, speculatively, wonderingly. Ask yourself questions. Use your words delicately and gently. Stay open. Keep looking. Let go. Let go. Let go. In this way, your words will keep your eyes open instead of closing them.” (P. 61)

“As we write in our journals, we are, in effect, talking to ourselves. “Who am I?” “Why am I here?” What is my purpose in life?” “What matters?” (P. 74)

“We do this watching work, this journal work, so that we might be centered in our greater Self, so that we might find peace and love within ourselves – and give peace and love to others.” (P.79)

“Given the tools, we can heal ourselves and break the terrible chain of passing down wounds. Writing is such a tool.” P. 112)

“Let us not, you and I, be paralyzed by the sometimes madness of the world. Let us follow our writing and our being inward to that quiet place within ourselves and let us be centered there. And from that center, let us go outward in love to the world.” (P.169)

This book is an excellent resource for those who want to start journaling. The exploration exercises at the end of each chapter are a treasure. The book is helping me through this journey so I highly recommend it.

About the Author

G. Lynn Nelson, born on December 21, 1937, was an American author and academic notable for his advocacy of young adult writing programs and the implementation of alternative approaches to language study informed by Native American concepts. Nelson began teaching at Arizona State University in 1973 and served as the director of the regional Greater Phoenix Area Writing Project (GPAWP), a regional site of the National Writing Project (NWP), until 2004. He co-founded the Young Adult Writing Project (YAWP) in 1996. Nelson died on November 6, 2014.¹

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1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._Lynn_Nelson ↩︎

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