In addition to the 40,000-plus handwritten words and nearly 7,000 typed words that I’ll have in hand by the time I finish National Novel Writing Month on Friday, I also have a secret weapon: my writing journals. The poet Deborah Keenan encouraged all of her students to keep writing journals and over the past few years, I have done so.

Whatever random thoughts, or snippets of dialogue, or poems I like, or images that strike my imagination, I paste into a Moleskin 7.5 x 10 inch lined journal with a soft manila cardboard cover. The photos below are pages from a journal that I made in anticipation of writing this rabbit tale someday.

My journals tend to be more visual than wordy, but I do find that the Star-Tribune and New York Times Sunday newspapers are great resources for ideas and information. Plus, it’s a fun cut-and-paste activity, more along the lines of “play” that I wrote about in an earlier post. 

Today my word count was 1,567. Twenty-eight days down, only two to go!