Introduction

I first wrote a guideline for journal writing in the fall of 2000, offering the following rationale:

Writers and researchers keep journals. These people are in the business of inquiry, of understanding new things, finding better and more eloquent ways of talking about what is important to them and their communities. This kind of work doesn’t happen all at once when a bolt of genius strikes the writer/researcher. Instead, understanding is almost always the result of extended observation, responses to the ideas of other people, and reflection on the topic being explored and on the purpose for exploring it. A journal is a place—a legal pad, a notebook, a sketchbook, some loose-leaf paper, a computer file—where a writer/researcher working on a project keeps track of observations, thoughts, speculations, new ideas, reactions, plans, and the like. (For some writers, the project is life itself; they are constantly taking down this information for use in their writing.)

In 2004 I revisited my guidelines after taking an online class. This course did not require me to keep a journal, and at first I didn’t. Interestingly, I was a bit lost in the class. I was trying to write responses to assignments off the top of my head and wasn’t very satisfied with the results. After a week of the four-week course, I started my own electronic journal. This file provided me a space to think through the assignments and served as a place where I could craft first-draft responses to online postings and written assignments. (I worked with an electronic journal so that I could easily revise and post my work.) This was the first class that I had taken since 1994, and it convinced me that I needed to convince writers to take journal writing seriously.

As I prepared to teach a fully online section of ENG 101 for summer 2006, I revised this document yet again. In winter 2009 and then again in 2019, I made more changes to my journal guidelines. Interestingly, the basic contours of these guidelines remained unchanged from the 2000 document. I still understand a journal as a low-stakes place where writers go to work out their ideas. What was new was my understanding of how a journal functions in wired, global contexts and how students resist this low-stakes work (preferring simply to write “final drafts” of required essays). I also added 2009 a bit on postings since we make use of discussion threads a lot. I think of postings as journal entries and often ask students to compose postings in their journals. Postings make the entries available to all of us. These guidelines are, thus, a sort of argument for a way of being a writer.

The Journal

The basic assignment is simple: create a journal, use it to reflect on your work for this class (and whatever else you want to reflect on), and make sure that your entries include all required journal assignments. I used to ask writers to complete 3 pages every week—a page was about 200 words of writing. Most writers went way beyond that, so I let go of that requirement. To gain full-credit for your journal, you need to

1. write complete entries (think of an entry as a burst of a couple hundred words)
2. include all required entries
3. give entries clear titles
4. collect entries all in a single platform (notebook, Google Doc, Word Doc, blog, whatever)
5. keep an up-to-date table of contents (most apps will create one for you if you use their heading feature)
6. format  and submit the journal when it is requested–it will be submitted multiple times, often with a collection-specific introduction and new entries added to the same notebook or document

There is a simple reason for this doing this work in a (de)composition class. Few writers can sit and produce the kind of writing that college composing involves. Instead, they need to think through ideas and approaches to problems, to see what they think and to refine those thoughts. This intellectual work requires some tool that records the initial ideas and makes those initial ideas available for reflection. The course journal is just such a tool. Use it to jot down ideas that come up in group exercises or that occur to you while you are sitting in the library or in front of the TV or wherever it is that you think.

A journal, as I conceive it, is not a formal paper or a set of lecture notes though often sections of drafts and notes on important experiences and texts appear in the pages of a journal. Instead, a journal is a sort of organic record of ideas and experiences: a journal is organic because it grows dialogically over time; it is a record because it is written in response to data and arguments that come into a writer’s awareness. Journal entries will never be your cleanest writing (though others will need to be able to understand what you scribble down). Most hand-written journals are messy, full of crossed out lines, misspelled words, sketches, open-ended questions and incomplete thoughts. Digital journals include images, text pasted in from other drafts and even other writers (though an effective journal makes clear attributions so that the writer avoids plagiarism). In all cases, a journal is a place where a writer keeps field notes and works out observations and arguments that may later on make their way into a piece of writing that she will decide to publish. I will offer below brief descriptions of two kinds of entries that you will produce frequently.

Notes on Readings

I discovered in the online class that I took in spring 2004, that my journal became a critical repository of notes. Class readings are often web pages or PDF files. I have methods for marking up both of these, and I found myself copying and pasting text from readings into my journal so that I could make build my own ideas around ideas that caught my attention. Without creating outlines and scribbling or keying in reflections, I suspect I would have learned little from scanning and marking up dozens of web pages and other electronic files. I expect to see in your journal a record of your thinking about your reading and viewing and listening. Writing Assignments (WAs) will suggest what you “have to” write, but I encourage you to think about what you need to write if you are to make use of what you are reading.

Discussion Postings

We may complete formal discussion postings from time to time, and you will also participate in discussions on Canvas as you complete group projects and other assignments. I have come to see electronic discussions as journal entries that enter into a dialogue with others. These writing exercises are clearly different from conventional journal entry but often begin in a journal. In fact, in the class I took in the spring of 2004, I was a bit overwhelmed by the discussion forums. There were about thirty of us in the class and typically, each of us put up our own posting and then read everyone else’s and responded to two or three of those postings. This setting was pretty noisy and chaotic. It was hard to keep track of who said what, especially because I didn’t know any of my classmates and wasn’t likely to meet them. Nonetheless, I dutifully read my colleagues ideas and responded, using my journal as a place to draft my responses before I went public with them. Over time, these forums led me to articulate my own ideas and experiences for others and then to consider other points of view. I started to look for postings that made me say, “How did you come up with that,” and then to initiate a dialogue with that poster. For over a year, I went to those forums to pull out ideas and information that my classmates had compiled.

Journal Practices

Because journal writing is different from formal school writing, you may need to learn how to do it. First, consider some practical ideas for approaching a journal (these suggestions come from a book by Toby Fulwiler, a writing professor who made a lot of use of journals).

• Avoid extremes. Your journal is not an objective collection of notes, and it is not a diary of your feelings. Instead, a journal is your response to class/project materials and activities. You’ll use phrases like “I wonder,” “I think,” “I love/hate,” and “I believe” regularly. But what you are responding to the work of the class and not your feelings about lunch–unless lunch relates to the class in some way that you make evident.
• Dedicate a notebook or file or folder. Your journal may include some class notes, but it is more than class notes. Establish a place where you write journal entries and decide whether to include class notes (with titles and dates). For years, I preferred a small notebook (7″ x 10″). It was easy to carry with me, and I could photocopy entries that my teachers, coworkers, or students wanted to read. In the past few years, I have increasingly done journal writing online. This has meant dedicating a file for a class or project and organizing it as a journal. I tend to compose in Word and then move entries onto a blog or a Google Site or discussion forum—I’m really comfortable in Word. You will likely use this digital strategy but be thoughtful. I simply do not do my best thinking at a keyboard. I still keep a notebook journal for poems and late-night reflections.
• Date and title each new entry. This way, you can focus entries on class assignments or on the particular problems that you need to solve, and you’ll have an easily searchable record of how your thoughts developed over time. I use the heading feature in Word or Google Docs so that as my journal grows, I can easily create a table of contents.
• Write in your natural voice. Don’t worry about using just the right word or sentence or even about spelling and grammar. You can deal with those issues in formal projects. Your journal is where you pull together the ideas you will develop in those projects. In postings, you will need to use a style that gives the rest of us access to your thinking, so the conventions of grammar and spelling will matter differently.
• Write regularly and for more than a couple minutes. It takes time to work through ideas and to warm up. Give yourself enough time to find out what you really think. Consider writing for a set amount of time each day, maybe even at the same time each day.
• Be prepared to write frequently in lots of different settings. Since your journal is a tool for better understanding class materials, you’ll need to have access to it when you make discoveries. I keep mine in a dropbox that I can get to anywhere; I always seem to have a laptop with me. You many not, and you may occasionally use your phone to jot down a few words—I doubt a phone is the tool you want to use for all your journaling. If you avoid the cloud, you may use a flash drive. Keep a notebook if you spend long periods away from computers. If you limit your access to your journal, you will likely have limited ideas to write from.
• Review your journal frequently and add some basic signposts. Since your journal is a kind of record of your ideas, structure it so that you and your readers can see how your ideas developed. From time to time, and certainly before you hand in your journal, put in page numbers, make sure each entry has a title and a date, and write up a table of contents, an introduction, and a conclusion. Your reader will be able to move more quickly through your project, and you’ll show them that your thoughts should be taken seriously. I regularly use Word’s Comment feature (or a highlighter) to add new ideas to journal pages or to call my attention to ideas that I want to return to.

Once you have made some decisions about how you will keep your journal, expand your notion of what you will do in it. While you may do other things with your journal, writing in these modes—also Fulwiler’s—will help you make the best use of your journal.

• Observation. Note down what you have seen or read while you are looking or reading. Often this kind of writing results in lists. Sometimes this kind of writing will include your own response to what you noticed; sometimes they’ll just be observations.
• Definition. Write down and define important terms and concepts and then develop explanations of what they mean to you, and your journal becomes your own specialized dictionary.
• Confusion. Part of inquiry is wrestling with what you don’t know. Describing confusion often helps writers identify what they don’t understand and sometimes begin to make sense of it.
• Speculation. When you are in the middle of a project or a reading or an argument, it sometimes helps to guess where it is going. This kind of writing raises questions that you will come back to as you keep developing the project.
• Insight. This important activity gives you a chance to record discoveries on paper before you forget them. Often, you may be doing another kind of writing and suddenly see the answer to a question or the direction the project could go.
• Connection. Good researchers take time to make connections between ideas or readings or definitions or speculations. Since an important part of the job of an inquirer is to make connections, you’ll need to do this kind of writing regularly.
• Reaction to and Reflection on Class and Project. You may not take class notes in your journal, but you will regularly use your journal to figure out what’s going on in class and how you’re responding to class materials. You’ll be reflecting on your personal situation, what you’re learning, how you’re feeling.

Journal Collections

I will collect and review your journal a few times during the semester, always with at least a week’s notice. As you can see in the rating guide below, journal entry and discussion posting grades are based on completeness rather than correctness. However, to gain full credit you will need to submit on time a journal that meets the requirements listed above. Here’s the protocol to follow as you get ready for a collection:

1. Check to see that each journal entry is clearly titled and dated, pages are numbered, and the table of contents is up-to-date.
2. Digitize your journal (if it is not already digital).
3. Write a short introduction that identifies what is being handed in and why it is significant for you as a writer.

If you discover that a journal entry ranges into personal writing that you would prefer I not read, simply remove the text or let me know that I should skip passages.

Rating Guide for Journal Collections