Take up some sort of private writing practice for CLARITY and better COMMUNICATION.
Writing is an alchemical process by which things that are unknown rise to the conscious level.
Welcome to my blog. My name is Niloufar and I make content that helps us become better communicators. Check out my Youtube video below about one of my favorite practices and habits—writing. Whether it's keeping a diary, writing a journal, writing letters, texting, writing poems, confessionals, or even conferring with ChatGPT. Yes, ChatGPT!
I use the term “journaling” as an umbrella term for all of these writing practices, the purpose of which is for us to understand ourselves better, and then be able to communicate that to other people, which is the purpose of my Youtube channel.
This post/video has 4 sections.
1st part: WHY journaling is important in having great communication skills and success in our personal and professional lives.
2nd part: WHAT journaling is, and how it’s different from keeping a diary, for example.
3rd part: my own journaling practice and how it's shifted over time, how it's helped me as an individual and author. Having had decades of journals was of great help to me in writing my recent memoir, Self-Portrait in Bloom.
4th part: YOU journaling.
Part 1: WHY should we journal?
I recently made a video about the benefits of having great communication skills in our PERSONAL lives. It's part 1 of a 2-part video. The 2nd one will be about the benefits of great communication skills in our professional lives. Stay tuned for that.
In essence, writing is a way to understand ourselves, become clear about the ways we feel and think, and our needs, so that we can clearly and effectively relay that to other people. So let’s review the practice and habit of journaling.
There's an old adage about writings: I write so that I know what I think.
And nothing could be closer to the truth. As a writer, writing is my vocation and currency, but as a communication coach to people who may or may not want to become writers, but who do want to become better communicators, I can tell you that working through things through writing is by far one of the most effective ways to understanding yourselves and being able to be clear with other people—that is, having better communication skills.
Putting some time aside to just be quiet with our own thoughts and writing is especially important in our age of digital distractions and endless stimulation, when we scarcely have the presence of mind to spend some time alone, in pause.
Part 2: WHAT is journaling?
The terms journal and diary are fluid and they can be used interchangeably. But the main differences between a diary and a journal are:
A diary is generally a daily log of events. When we think of a diary, we think of a beautiful book, maybe with a locket that we take out at the end of the day, in bed, and we just sort of write down what happened in that day and what we felt. A diary is a private monologue with ourselves.
A journal, on the other hand, it is not only about a log of events and the ways that you felt about those events on that day. Journals are generally a little bit more intentional in the specific goal that it's setting for itself. And they serve US as a tool for the greater purpose of processing through our ideas and feelings, and being in dialogue with ourselves.
Journals can have themes: dream Journal or a nutrition journal, or a travel journal, or now the ever popular gratitude journal.
But again, the terms diary and journal can be used interchangeably and they're really fluid. I'm using the term “journaling” as an umbrella term for all kinds of writing.
In the literary context, journals or diaries are writers’ chronicles of keeping track of their ideas, working out experiments in language, exploring themes and topics, maybe situating their creative process in their historical era.
Often, journals and diaries are written for private use, but sometimes they're written with the idea that they will one day be published so that we, as readers, can get a peek into the creative process and personal lives and trials and tribulations of our favorite writers’ lives and artistic output.
Some of my favorite journal writers and diarists are some of my favorite writers: Anaïs Nin, who was a French-born American diarist, novelist, essayist, and writer of erotica, started keeping a diary at the age of six. Her diaries were published during her lifetime, but later, Anaïs Nin’s Unexpurgated Diaries were published, which I love reading and highly recommend 🔥.
Other writers who kept diaries that are published in multiple volumes are Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir. I’ll link to all of these diaries and journals down below in the description so you can take a peek at how they were able to translate their process and ideas into the final products that they made, the books that they wrote.
Part 3: My journaling and writing practice
I started keeping a diary from a young age, not every day, but consistently throughout my life. That shifted over time as I went from being an individual keeping logs of my thoughts and daily events into journals that I kept as I was becoming a writer much more intentionally. I started to keep my reflections on the books that I was reading and the ideas that I had for the books that I wanted to write, and for the kind of writer that I wanted to become.
Writing consistently has helped me understand myself as an individual and as an artist.
Here are a few of my journals and writing instruments:
Though things have shifted from a more analog way of keeping journals to a more digital way of keeping journals, I still carry around notebooks with myself. This is my latest one that I've had for some time. it's rather large, so I don't carry this around every day. I also carry around smaller versions, maybe even post-it notes or just small moleskin notebooks that I just tuck into my purse. Sometimes when I'm sitting at a concert and it's not really favored upon for me to take my phone out and text things to myself, it's really convenient to have these small notebooks.
Writing instruments I love to write with include fountain pens and roller ball pens.
I love writing with this Precise Pilot in the color blue with a slightly thick tip.
I've been writing with fountain pens since I was a child growing up in Tehran. The old, gold one is very dear to me. It was a gift to my father by one of his patients, and he gave it to me when I was a tween. It’s a Parker, and it was in a set with a slightly smaller one that was a pen that I've unfortunately lost in the past few years. It's discolored and doesn't roll as smoothly as it used to be. It doesn't even properly shut anymore, but it has incredible sentimental value to me, and I still write with it.
The clear Pelican was given to me by a friend who just knew to give me the perfect gift. It screws open and closed. He also gifted me wonderful emerald green ink, which reminds me of the Tinta Verde ink that Neruda was known for writing with. It’s the smoothest fountain pen that I have, such a pleasure to write with.
I bought the Super5 white one for myself. It's hefty and I love the way it snaps shut. I fill it with vintage purple ink I found at a consignment store. I carry this one around on a daily basis.
Like most people, I’ve shifted from only writing in notebooks to a combination of writing in digital files and notebooks. When I was writing my memoir and taking daily walks and audio-booking, I noticed that my ideas dictated to me in which form they wanted to be expressed:
Some of them wanted be be texted to myself. Some had to be written out in long hand on a piece of paper. Some demanded to be typed on my laptop, and some of them wanted to be recorded as a voice memo. Go figure!
I don't know why this was, but I followed what the thoughts and the feelings wanted me to do. I would say 30% of notes that I took that were then transcribed into digital files and then re-edited and revised and added to and deleted and expanded were written to myself in some kind of on-the-go form.
I say all this because I want to encourage YOU to find the best way that your ideas want to be expressed. Sometimes, you may want to sit at a desk and write a letter to somebody that you want to communicate with but cannot in person, or things are too charged, or you just need to process through your feelings and get things off your chest. You may never send this letter, but chances are you will be relieved, heard/expressed, AND you will probably know in a lot more detail HOW you feel. Which leads me to….
Part 4: YOU journaling TO become clear
Because what is writing, but us forcing ourselves to think through those impulses and tangle of pre-verbal feelings that have yet to be translated into a thought, word, phrase, or a full sentence. Writing prompts us to make those many leaps of translation.
So: write. Write for the sake of understanding yourselves.
Make writing a part of your lives. I promise you it'll be one of the most valuable things you've done. It'll make you more measured in the way you think and speak with yourselves and others. It'll help you with your own internal monologue, help you tame that committee of critical voices. If anything, it'll instigate some private time with yourselves. Some pause, silence, breath away from these external stimulations that we're bombarded with.
Take a breath and do that for yourselves.
Try JOURNALING, and let me know how it works for you.