The Benefits of Journaling (And Other Types of Writing)

Writing isn’t limited to creative writing. From journaling, to essays, to articles, blogging and penning your very own novel, there’s plenty of different types (and associated benefits) to choose from.

Table of Contents

Introduction

With Nanowrimo looming in the background, I’ve been thinking more about reintroducing writing into my life. I used to write a lot more than I do now–mostly daily writing prompts that were each a scene in length and which I never committed a full story to, but enjoyed exploring nonetheless. But writing isn’t limited to creative writing. There are many types of writing, each with their own set of benefits. You’ve probably heard about the benefits of journaling for productivity and mental health. Or maybe you’ve thought about writing a book, whether it be an educational one, a fantasy narrative; heck, maybe you want to write an autobiography. In this article, I’ll explore some different types and styles of writing, and how you can get started with a daily or periodic writing practice.

Journaling

Journaling and therapeutic writing can be beneficial in the areas of memory and self-development. Reflecting on yourself has also been shown to be therapeutic and potentially have rehabilitative purposes, when used in an appropriate manner.

I started a daily journaling practice back in January 2020. Before this, I’d journal sporadically,  typically only during vacations as a sort of “travel log, because for most of us, that’s where you have the most exhilarating, fun, and interesting experiences. Everyday life was too mundane to document, so journaling daily seemed a pointless and fruitless endeavour. But nowadays, I journal almost every day, even when most of what I write doesn’t matter so much in the grand scheme of things. So what can you journal about, and why can journaling be a helpful addition to your day?

1. Process Emotions

One of the main benefits of journaling is using it to safely process emotions, especially negative ones. A private journal can be a non-judgemental space, and is always available as a place where you can vent about your troubles, even if you don’t have someone to lend you a shoulder. Journaling can allow you to “think” through an emotion, come up with different ways of addressing it, and detach from the situation instead of shoving it deep down and keeping it bottled up.

However, this comes with the caveat that it can become an echo-chamber of self-loathing if you’re not careful, since you are both the one reacting to the event, the one in charge of processing the event, and the one interpreting the events that transpired and providing judgment. . As well, journaling should not replace a support system made up of people you trust, or a therapist if you are in need of one–but can be an option when you want to offload some stress and work through a tough emotion, as well as become more aware to what commonly makes you sad, or angry, or happy.

Consider the following prompts you can ask yourself:

  1. What happened in the situation?
  2. What made you feel a certain way?
  3. Is there a pattern of behaviour or an emotional trigger?
  4. What have you learned from this experience, and how can you better manage it next time–whether it be an action you can take, or a support person you can seek out?

Remember, your feelings might be justified in a given situation, but it may still be a good exercise to explore it through writing to be able to see the different angles of the story. Sometimes, it’s good to write as soon as the event happened, so as to fully capture what you felt in the moment, and revisit it after you’ve taken a breather and can think logically. Other times, doing so might make you temporarily more distressed, especially after a traumatic event, and it may be better to take a few days before committing it to writing[1]. After all, writing–and the decision to pursue it—can be extremely personal.

2. Daily Reflections

You can use daily and periodic reflections to establish a feedback loop for yourself. When reflecting on the events of a day, consider including the following details:

  • Describe the situation or goal
  • Describe what action you took
  • Describe what you did well or what you did poorly
  • Describe what you could have done better on

In the moment, it may be hard to recognize these so-called “learning moments”. But once you start reflecting on yourself, you gradually may gain more self-awareness, and your journals can be a great aid to your self-development journey, as a record of learnings and progress.

I’ve talked about my own template for my weekly reflections, the 6R Method, here. You could also approach it using the STAR method, adapted from interview questions to a reflection-like setting. STAR stands for Situation, Task, Actions, and Results. Modify this structure by replacing “Task” with the problem, and adding “Learnings” to the end. 

3. Daily Planning

Some like to plan their days, either at the end or the beginning of each day. Often, I end my days setting my intentions for the next day (or week, for weekly reviews) in my daily journal entry. In the morning, I review what I’ve set out, and if there are tasks, I block them into my calendar.

Daily planning can be a great practice to set your intentions and a direction for the next day, and to document any concerns or pending tasks that are on your mind at night, so you can have a restful sleep.

4. Habit Logging

Habit logging, either as a separate tracker or integrated within a journal entry, can motivate you to keep the habit going. Integrated trackers could be part of a weekly/monthly note or bullet journal spread. At the end of the day, review the habits you have completed and consider how you could improve consistency, and/or reflect on your progress.

5. As a Record of Events

One of the primary uses of my own journal is to record what happens each day. I love being able to see what happened on February 28, 2022, or January 1, 2021, or July 13, 2023, or whatever date I have an entry for–especially because I find that I can’t really rely on my memory that much. Even though I don’t often look back, it can really help if I’m looking for something specific that I vaguely remember, pulling together stories, anecdotes, and scenarios for interview questions or telling them to friends or acquaintances, and reliving the best and worst moments of the year. It can also be rewarding to see how things have changed, how you overcame obstacles, and how you grew, especially if you’re in the practice of doing yearly reviews.

6. Quick Capture

Using a spare notebook or a blank page to jot down notes, thoughts, things you want to search up later, or to-dos, is something that really helps reduce distraction and multitasking. We aren’t made for multi-tasking, and there is a “context switch tax” that gets paid every time we switch from one activity to another. Having a journal to write down stray thoughts that pop up allow it to have its own space to live in, keep you focused on the task on hand, and reduce that nagging feeling in the back of your mind whenever you resort to relying on solely your memory to store these thoughts and tasks–and then promptly forget about it later or become too distracted, so that whatever else you were working on before this suffers in quality.

7. Recording Secrets

Finally, you can use a private journal to write down anything you don’t want to tell anyone else. If you’re especially concerned about privacy, use an app that encrypts your data, and/or store your data locally.

How to Start Journaling

Here are some suggestions to get started:

  1. Establish a micro-habit. A micro-habit[5] is a habit that is reduced to its barest minimum, its simplest building block. The purpose of a micro-habit is to help you get started and reduce resistance to the smallest possible point. For journaling, this could mean writing one sentence each day, or using a mood tracker to track your mood. You could document just what you felt that day, or your energy levels throughout. You could summarize your entire day into one sentence–make it a challenge! You could reflect on what you are grateful for, from the large things to the small.
  2. Set a specific time per day to write. A period of time during mornings (for planning) and evenings (for journaling) is one option.
  3. Use bullet points. You don’t have to write long, rambling tirades or write out your entire life story. Bullet points can do just as well.
  4. Set a timer. I set one for 15 minutes every night. This makes sure I don’t spend too much time journaling, but enough time to write down everything from the day.
  5. Consider an app that has a calendar feature. Using the calendar feature is great for looking back. And with an integrated calendar, you can also see the events you’ve added to that date, making journaling easier.
  6. Be creative! You don’t have to buy that shiny new journal or planner from your nearest box store or go all out in Notion. Any old notebook or app will do. Even a Twitter thread, Discord server, directly on your calendar app, or a blog can work, though in this case I’d recommend ones that show timestamps. Ensure you consider, however, the privacy issues that come with these solutions: from both an audience perspective (what should you not share in public on the Internet?) and the application perspective (is this app secure and private?), as well as ownership of the content (will you lose your data if this app goes down?)

Creative Writing

I took a creative writing class in university as an elective that really opened my eyes up as to what is considered “creative writing”. This class was taught to focus on the many different genres of creative writing. Think that creative writing is just writing a fiction book? Think again. Creative writing can be anything from:

  • A fiction novel, series, or novella
  • Short stories, flash fiction, nano-fiction, drabbles (works of 100 words in length)
  • Poetry (and its many forms)
  • Script-writing: plays, narrative games, visual novels, TV shows, movies, podcasts, webcomics

One of the main benefits of creative writing, in my opinion, is that through your writing, you are allowed a space to process emotions and analyze different facets of your own life through a fictional lens. There was a video I watched from Cinema Therapy that echoed this sentiment, that through movies (and similar narrative mediums), the audience is able to experience catharsis that they may not be able to in real life, and I tend to agree with this statement. One of the reasons why I write (albeit infrequently these days) is to see if I can, through my writing, make readers feel emotions I want them to feel, through the characters and situation I’m writing for.

There have been studies that show the therapeutic benefits of creative writing as well. However, because the term “creative writing” is such a broadly used term, sometimes it overlaps with journaling and therapeutic writing. In a systematic review titled Does therapeutic writing help people with long-term conditions?,[2] Nyssen et. al identifies two main categories of therapeutic writing: “written emotional disclosure” or EW, and creative writing. The former is more of the dissecting of personal life events, facilitated and unfacilitated writing exercises, and other “self-help” exercises. It may be important to distinguish the two in some cases[3], as again, journaling and therapeutic writing can often be private in nature, whereas with creative writing, you might not have to think twice about publishing your work to the world to see.

Nevertheless, barring the potential benefits of making such a distinction, you can approach both types of writing with the target of using it as an aid to process emotions. And as with many forms of art, completing a work from start to finish, whether fiction or nonfiction, can be a huge mood-booster. It’s a “look at that, I’ve put something of my own into this world that wasn’t there before” feeling. Or maybe there’s a trope you actively dislike and want to remedy in your own work. I’ve been there.

How to Start Writing

  1. Prompts/Writing Exercises: Need some prompts? Check out a prompt generator such as oneword or a compilation such as r/WritingPrompts or WritingExercises.co.uk.
  2. Microfiction: Need some inspiration for tiny, tiny stories you can establish as a microhabit? Check out flash fiction such as Every Day Fiction, Nanoism, and more. You can also find places to submit or publish your short stories and flash fiction, if that’s something that tickles your fancy.
  3. Timer Challenges: If you’re looking for a challenge, use sites such as The Most Dangerous Writing App that deletes your writing if you stop writing, or Cold Turkey Writer that requires you to write for x minutes or words before you can exit the app.
  4. Challenges: While not for everyone, there are writing challenges such as Nanowrimo or even FAWM (February Album Writing Month).
  5. Micro-habits: Bringing back the micro-habit, Nanowrimo really drives home the fact that you could write 50,000 words in a month by writing 1,667 words a day, which is around the length of a short novel or novella. If you write 100 words every day, you could, in theory, write 36,500 words over the year. Start with a sentence a day. Maybe try Camp Nanowrimo, if the 50,000 requirement for Nanowrimo is too much (and from my experience winning it last year, there were some days where I did feel like it was a lot of words and other days, not so much), as you can set your own word count goal there and still participate in a challenge with other writers. Or what about 750 words, a website where you track your daily writing practice of–you guessed it–750 words. That’s 273,750 words a year if you are consistent with it!
  6. Freewriting: Freewriting is a technique where you write, well, freely, without thinking too much about what you are writing. Think of it like spilling your thoughts in a single, continuous flow of words onto paper or your document. This can help with idea generation as you are not limited by your “inner editor”.

Essays & Technical Writing

If you had to take English class in high school, you will remember having to write those painful essays based on books you (probably) didn’t enjoy. While you may have hated this part of the curriculum, what was the point of writing all those essays, anyway?

Essay writing offers the following benefits: it can develop your critical thinking ability, learn how to develop opinions and form strong arguments, and exercise your ability to approach a topic from different angles and be more open-minded. It helps in strengthening your logical muscle: learning how to make connections between pre-existing and new knowledge.[4] This is what helps you learn how to think and persuade, and aids in the synthesis of new ideas and the understanding of old ones.

Starting with improving your ability to express opinions, when you write a thesis, you are stating your opinion on a subject. You then strive to support that opinion with evidence: to argue for your thesis is to draw together various bits of information and analysis to form a conclusion that is well-structured and logical. A good essay also must be able to persuade the reader to see their point of view in a convincing manner.

During the research phase, you will come across many different ideas. When studying literature, you are often asked to look for symbolism and overarching thematic elements. In order to tie those ideas together to support your thesis, you develop your analytical and critical thinking skills by coming up with different interpretations of the source material, or outside the context of literature, support your viewpoint through statistics, qualitative and quantitative factors, while also acknowledging biases and assessing quality of the sources you use. These ultimately allow you to gain a deep understanding of your source material or topic of interest.

In fact, the research phase is where you may find counterarguments that go against your thesis. Since the world isn’t black and white, this can encourage you to consider the nuances of a situation, strengthen your viewpoint by addressing weaknesses in the counterargument, or consider different viewpoints altogether.

All in all, non-fiction, essay, speech and technical writing practice helps you become a better thinker and communicator. You might just learn a thing or two from the topic you do a deep-dive into next.

How to Start Writing

You may think, “why would I willingly write an essay in my own free time?” And maybe you’re right. But if you just want to exercise this skill in smaller ways, consider the following exercises:

  1.  Analyze a news article on a current topic. Consider the biases of the author or news site, the reliability of the sources, and corroborate the opinion stated with research of your own.
  2. Take one chapter of the book you’re currently reading. Consider the message of the book and how that shows up in this chapter. Observe how the author persuades you with their writing style or structure. Write down three key takeaways. Look into the sources, if any.
  3. Choose a topic of interest or a random Wikipedia article. Learn all about it. You can create a presentation or video on the most interesting facts–this is more fun if it’s a niche topic or topic you are actually interested in (or if you have nerdy friends to make it into a competition to create the most entertaining presentation).

Other Types of Writing

Of course, there are plenty of other types of writing I haven’t been able to cover here (without making this article any longer than it already is!) Including blogging–how can I forget it when this whole article has been a blog post to begin with?

While I won’t be adding any more types or going in depth about blogs here, know that this is only a taste of what’s out there and that there are plenty of options for you to explore.

Writing Apps and Websites

If you’re looking for software to use, here’s a list I’ve compiled to get you started. Keep in mind that the act of writing is what’s truly important–apps are simply the tool, or medium, you use to express your thoughts with. It’s also up to personal preference if you want a dedicated notes app or an “everything” app like Notion.

(Also, you can’t go wrong with a notebook and your favourite pen or pencil!)

Disclaimer: Apps marked with an asterisk (*) are those I’ve personally had experience using before, though it doesn’t mean I necessarily endorse it or use them often.

  1. Word Processing Apps: Google Docs*, Microsoft Word*, LibreOffice*
  2. Notes Apps: Apple Notes, Bear, Evernote*, Notion*, Joplin*, Simplenote, Google Keep*, Ulysses, Anytype, Capacities
  3. Journal Apps: Journey*, Journalistic, 5 Minute Journal, Grid Diary, Day One, Penzu, Daybook
  4. Mood-Tracking: Daylio, DailyBean, MoodNotes
  5. Hybrid Task + Notes: Amplenote, Legend App, ClickUp*
  6. Supports Crosslinks: Obsidian*, Logseq, Roam Research, Dynalist, Notion*, Capacities, Anytype
  7. Zettelkasten Capabilities: The Archive, Zettlr*, Obsidian*
  8. Minimal: Calmly Writer*, Writer by Big Huge Labs*, ZenPen, Ommwriter, WriteMonkey, Noisli*
  9. Markdown Support: StackEdit, Dillinger, Obsidian*, Zettlr*, Notion*, Google Docs* (Tools > Preferences > Automatically detect Markdown), Noisli*, Ulysses, etc.
  10. For Nanowrimo: Cold Turkey Writer, Sprinto bot for Discord, Write or Die, The Most Dangerous Writing App, Word Sprint plugin for Obsidian*, Writer by Big Huge Labs*, 750 Words
  11. Fiction Writing: yWriter*, Scrivener, Novlr, Bibisco
  12. Stylus Support: Goodnotes, OneNote*, Squid Notes, INKredible, Notability, Concepts*

Tools I Use For Writing

If you’re curious about what apps I currently use for writing, here is my current toolkit:

  1. Notion: I used to use Notion for daily journaling, but moved to Obsidian for the portability and assurance that I own the notes behind my writing. I still use Notion for quickly planning out the day, using both to-do and bullet-type blocks underneath “Morning (6AM-12PM)”, “Afternoon (12PM-6PM)” and “Evening (6PM-12AM)” headers. Notion is still king when it comes to databases, and I primarily use it for such. Also, because of the nature of Obsidian notes being stored in Markdown format (.md), tables aren’t very intuitive as of writing this article.
  2. Obsidian: My current daily journaling app and notes app. I use the Calendar and Periodic Notes plugins rigorously. I also draft articles for the blog here and export them using Pandoc. I’m a Markdown fan, and though not open-source, I like that my notes are locally stored (more future-proof than those stored on the cloud or on the servers of another provider). I pair Obsidian with Syncthing to have a copy on my phone.
  3. Google Docs: Because I love the suggesting mode in Google Docs, I use it for almost all of my final editing, whether it be blog posts or stories. It’s also a great platform for collaboration. I import Word docs and Obsidian files (converted to Word) and do all my edits here.
  4. Google Keep: For quick notes I jot down on my phone.
  5. Cold Turkey Writer: I use this exclusively for Nanowrimo, as I can set it so that I cannot exit the app until I’ve written x words or for x minutes.
  6. OneNote: Back when I was in university, OneNote was my ride or die because it worked so well with PowerPoint and PDF files. I could simply import them as printouts and annotate them with text or with stylus drawings. Plus, it being a Microsoft product (I’m a Windows user) meant that the pencil tool, combined with a stylus, was one of the better and smoothest drawing experiences I’ve had.

Before you leave, here are some prompts to get you started! Happy writing 🙂

  1. Journal Prompt: What is one thing that you are scared of, and yet intrigued by?
  2. Creative Writing Prompt: (Taken from the official Nano Prep handbook.) Break down your favourite story into a short summary. Tweak a few details in that summary, and write a short story with your remix.
  3. Essay/Article Prompt: Write a short article about your favourite food: its history, interesting facts, how it’s made, and what makes it your favourite. Include any personal anecdotes like you’re running a recipe website and need some backstory to put above the recipe card.

Appendix

Resources are further readings that you may be interested in, or formed a minority basis of my research. Some of these may contradict the information presented in the article, especially on more subjective topics, and are meant to allow readers to come to their own conclusions and form a balanced opinion.

  1. University of Bolton. (2022). Psychological Benefits of Creative Writing. https://www.bolton.ac.uk/blogs/psychological-benefits-of-creative-writing
  2. UKEssays. (November 2018). What are The Benefits of Process Writing? https://www.ukessays.com/essays/english-language/what-are-the-benefits-of-process-writing-english-language-essay.php
  3. Christensen, A. and Weeks, J. (2009). Creative Writing as a Bridge to Better Academic Writing in Freshman Composition. https://locutorium.byu.edu/issues/volume-4-2009/creative-writing-as-a-bridge/
  4. Le Cunff, A. Mindful Context Switching: Multitasking for Humans. https://nesslabs.com/mindful-context-switching
  5. National Novel Writing Month. https://nanowrimo.org/
  6. Cinema Therapy. [YouTube Channel] https://www.youtube.com/@CinemaTherapyShow

References are material I referenced in a specific part of the article, or formed a majority basis of my research.

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