How To Get Extremely Creative with your Journaling

Ideas for your journals!

I am addicted to journaling. Every time I sit down to create, I often journal as well. I could never confine myself to merely one journal; I spread my creative seed across many different notebooks, each of them devoted to a different purpose.

First, I’ll discuss the various types of journals that you can create, and later I’ll get into more specific ways to personalize your journals.

A Commonplace Notebook

My commonplace notebook has probably been the most integral tool to my self-development. If you are unfamiliar with commonplace notebooks, they are journals where you collect quotes, excerpts, ideas, observations, information, and lists that feel important to you so that you can reflect on them later. I collect a lot of quotes on self-development and creativity. I also pen important lists that I want to come back to, such as;

• Things to do when I’m bored

• Subjects I want to study

• Blog post ideas

• Creative ideas

• Ideas for marketing without social media

• My accomplishments

• Affirmations

I also color-code the quotes to distinguish each quote based on its subject.

Vocabulary Akashic Records

This is my most beloved journal. I have it on hand almost always. I like to refer to it when I’m having writer’s block or can’t find the perfect word to add to a poem. Have you ever read someone’s writing and wondered, “How is their vocabulary so vast?” Well, perhaps they collect words, like me! In what I call my “Vocabulary Akashic Records,” I collect words. I’ve written pages and pages of just words that I have read and want to store for later. I also include definitions sometimes for the words that I am unfamiliar with. On top of that, I have lists of names and surnames, and pages devoted to snippets and lines of my prose and poems that I wrote and want to incorporate into my work later; they just don’t have a place yet. I do warn you, however, that a vocab akashic records can easily become a crutch. But I see it as a large source of inspiration, and when you use it for poetry, it’s similar to using William Burroughs’ “Cut-up method”

Excerpts and Quotes Journal

In this journal, I write excerpts from my favorite books and lines from my favorite poems and writers. It’s very good to refer back to before I start writing, because it influences my style positively.

Travel Journal

This is a journal I use specifically when I’m on vacation, or simply when I’m somewhere else besides home. I like to primarily write snapshots of my trip, but I also capture other random miscellaneous things that come to mind while out. Sometimes I include photographs and Polaroids from the trip as well. The more pocket-sized the journal you use, the better.

Novel Notebook

I wrote a post dedicated purely to my novel notebook and how to make one yourself, which you can read here. To summarize, a novel notebook is where you plot, outline, and come up with ideas for your book. You can also include character bios, setting descriptions, and other various worldbuilding. I also collect dialogue ideas and collage moodboards. My novel notebook is heavily rooted in aesthetics. I bought, foraged, designed, and printed visuals to get my novel notebook to match my book’s aesthetic as perfectly as possible. I utilized washi tape, Pinterest, Etsy, Canva, and more when designing this notebook. Sure, you can sort out your book in something like Scrivener, but I always find having a tangible journal that you can personalize to your heart’s content more stimulating.

The Digital Diary

This is a journal that’s purely digital. I prefer to use GoodNotes for this. It’s fun to work with this medium because it makes collaging very easy and clean, and you can use any font that’s out there by simply downloading it. I found all of the images I used on Pinterest, and I use my digital diary at work when it’s slow. To read my digital diary, I have my entries eternalized in this post.

The Catch-All Journal

This is your daily journal where you store everything: your little ravings, your thoughts and poems, your ideas and to-do lists, some quotes here and there, drawings, diary entries, collages, etcetera. I’ve used many Peter Pauper Press journals as my main writing hub. In the past few years, I’ve started to highly customize my journal and collage the pages into vibrant eye-candy. Of course, not every page in my catch-all journal is collaged as beautifully as the ones above are, but a good chunk of them are. I’ve found that it helps with recall, and draws me back into returning to the page at a later date—

There are a lot of other journal types that I utilize or have utilized in the past. Such as a plain old diary, a lyric book to help me write songs, a recipe notebook, and I even once wrote a diary for my main character. Yes, a journal written from the perspective of my first novel’s protagonist. I even tried to give him his own handwriting. He was quite the angsty fella.

Getting Creative

Now I’m going to get into the intricacies of customizing your journal in new and exciting ways. My philosophy is to think of my main journal like I would a junk journal. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of a junk journal, well, you are in for a very exciting discovery.

A junk journal is described as “A book which is often made through found and recycled materials to be used as a way to collect and record memories, thoughts, ideas, and inspiration.” by artjournalist.com

Everyone makes their junk journals differently; some only use stickers and printed images, and others sew together pockets and craft ephemera and glue lace and fabric trim onto the pages.

I myself have made quite a few junk journals of my own, which are completely separate from my main journal. These junk journals were made to be turned into poetry collections.

I made these ones!

In essence, a junk journal is a collage of aesthetics. Junk journals utilize things like vintage book pages, magazine cut-outs, receipts, mail, scraps, fabric, washi tape, scrapbooking paper, stickers, and more!

When I go to customize my journals, I hunt on the internet for images that match my preferred aesthetic. I forage for images on Pinterest. I buy digital junk journal pages on Etsy. I buy old magazines at antique stores and cut them up. I buy ephemera packs on eBay. I use wallpaper scraps that I find. I buy fabric and lace online. I tear out pages from art books I find at thrift stores. I buy mass amounts of washi tape, stationery, and stickers. I print out old memo pad pictures from Pinterest. I even collage and sell my own digital junk journal pages on Etsy, which you can see here (and purchase if you like.)

In conclusion, I get creative.

These are all ideas that you can use for your own journals. You can get funky with your main journal and really express yourself with the pages. I promise you, it will bring you so much joy.

I plan on collecting and collaging more images to sell in digital packs on Etsy and here. So if you are seeking a wellspring of images, I plan on compiling a bunch for creative use!

If you choose to utilize any of these ideas, I would love to see what you create!

To conclude this piece, I’ll finish by sharing some more inspiration for your journals.