© 1986 Don W. King

A version of this essay first appeared in Exercise Exchange 31 (Spring 1986): 18-20.

Most new composition texts published today make much of writing as a process, with obligatory sections devoted to prewriting, writing, and rewriting. When prewriting is discussed, the idea of keeping a journal is invariably suggested. Students are advised not to turn the journal into a diary, but rather to use the journal to record ideas, images, and feelings. Such advice is, of course, praiseworthy; unfortunately, however, few of the texts tell students how the development of a journal can contribute specifically to the writing of a finished essay, especially since the journal is often assigned as an ancillary writing project.

What is the role of the journal as a prewriting device? The traditional answer emphasizes the notion that a journal serves as a reservoir of impressionistic details. The weakness with this answer is that while it defines what goes into the journal, it does not tell students why such information is important. Although students are told that keeping a journal is a good way to get ideas that can be developed later into more structure kinds of writing assignments, the traditional answer assumes that students will be automatically capable of seeing the relationship between the journal and the essay. Such an assumption is not valid. Osmosis may be certain in various biological relationships; it is not when it comes to students being able to transfer journal ideas to essay writing.

What can we do in order to help students integrate the ideas they generate in their journals into more structured kinds of writing, especially expository and deliberative essays? First, we can begin by expanding the definition of the journal. Along with more esoteric notions about what can be recorded in the journal, we can encourage our students to write about remembered experiences and events, character sketches of influential people in their lives, musings on trivial but perhaps suggestive everyday events, explorations on puzzling situations or ideas, or detailed descriptions of significant places and surroundings. The goal at this point is to remove from our students' minds the thought that a journal is devoted to "mystical" or "out-of-body" experiences; we need to help them see that a journal is truly a place for generating and gathering interesting and provocative notions.

Second, we need to make clear that keeping a journal is not just an ancillary writing project. We must emphasize that writing a journal is an integral part of the writing process, and we need to back this up by evaluating, in some acceptable academic manner, each journal. We cannot assign journals and hope that students will compile them without some kind of feedback from us; most students will not keep a journal just because we

tell them that doing so will help their writing. There is a built in inertia factor we should try to help our students overcome. In addition, if we do not evaluate journals in a serious way, our students are likely to view them as "voo-doo" writing exercises. Evaluation on a regular basis, using whatever valid measurement we find appropriate, is necessary.

Third, and most important, we must consciously design journal assignments so that they will purposefully dovetail into later structured writing assignments. How can we do this? Perhaps the best approach is to assign a certain journal topic for our students to concentrate on for a period of not longer than one week; during that week students record, explore, and investigate various aspects of the assigned topic. Then later in the semester we can assign an essay topic that is closely related to the original journal, and our students can be directed back to their earlier journal writings for specific ideas or passages for further development. For instance, if we want students eventually to write a values deliberation essay, we can assign a series of journal writings on values several weeks in advance of the essay assignment. When the time comes to begin work on the values essay, they already will have substantial amounts of personal reflections to develop in the essay.

What follows is a suggested approach for using this method in order to integrate and connect the journal to the essay. The only "ground rule" I try to keep in mind when I use this method is to alternate from week to week between concrete and abstract topics:

Clearly not everything written in a journal can later be developed into an essay. However, if even one or two ideas from a journal can be used, we will have shown students the larger rhetorical purposes of the journal. The approach I have suggested attempts to pull in the journal from the fringes of the writing process, weaving it instead into the fabric of written discourse.