Leaving A Trace

...On Keeping A Journal, by Alexandra Johnson

I don’t need inspiration as much to keep a journal as I do to know what to journal, what to skip, and how to sort it all out once it’s on paper.


What a pleasant surprise this book was! I picked it up from the clearance rack at Barnes & Noble, thinking I’d get a couple tips on keeping my journals current. What I got instead was chapter after chapter, each led by quotes from the likes of Virginia Woolf, Annie Dillard, and Gail Godwin, among others, examining the importance of writing about key life events as well as the day-to-day. In reviewing your journals, you reveal your life story. She urges going back and re-reading what has been written, and more importantly, what was omitted, because there, often, are where the stories are. After reading this book, I really realize that anyone who considers themselves to be, or wants to be, a writer, must journal. She talks about why one should journal, the forms that journals can take (milestone journals, crisis journals, thankfulness journals, travel journals, etc..),dealing with your own internal censor, learning to view the world in detail---“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes”---Proust, as quoted in Leaving A Trace. This, specifically, appealed to me, as I have begun, in the past 10 years, to look at everything with “new eyes”. Johnson also talks about finding inspiration, and connecting the patterns in your journal that tell your story. She also includes very useful (and just plain fun) exercises at the end of each chapter, designed to train the writer to pay attention to the details, look for omissions, find “missing links”, and shape your daily writing into a meaningful story.


I’ve read other journal-keeping books in the past, but none of them come close to packing so much useful information into one place. On top of the information itself, Alexandra Johnson is a gifted storyteller, so she presents it all in a way that keeps your attention. I got more out of this than all the other books on this subject that I've read, combined. And the quotes and tips from the known writing community that she includes are inspiring. My copy is highlighted and written in the margins from the first read-through, and I’m sure I’ll keep using it and making more notes as I re-read it again and again.