Leaving a Trace: On Keeping a Journal
by Alexandra Johnson

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• ISBN13: 9780316121569
• Condition: New
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Book Reviews of Leaving a Trace: On Keeping a Journal

Book Review: A Basis of Creative Activity
Summary: 5 Stars

For those of us who have used our journal entries as the basis for writing, this book is apropos. Alexandra Johnson and others teach courses about journal and diary writing as the basis of creative activity. It was news to me that there are such courses. One of the keys to productive journal writing, according to the author, is to realize that journal entries need not only be about interesting places or unusual events. The everyday can be the source of material as well. As the author writes, "Life is in the details." It is interesting that many older people wish to achieve an understanding of their lives by writing about them in journals or diaries.

I suppose the most helpful thing that one learns from this book is to approach journal writing less formally. One does not have to be constrained to write everything in a commercially produced diary or to try to write only profound things. It took Frank McCourt, the author of "Angela's Ashes", years to realize that writing about the poverty of his early life could be literature.

Unconsciously, I had made some of the observations Alexandra Johnson makes, but I had not come to understand them as she does. For example, my father had written a diary when he was about twenty-one years old. Even though, he lived to be fifty-six, I had always regarded this diary as his best legacy. When an uncle of mine died, I asked for any journal that he might have kept. Eventually I came into possession of a number of letters that he had written to his parents when he was a soldier in WWII from Germany, France, Panama, and the Philippine Islands. So in a way, these letters formed the basis of a non-traditional kind of journal.

All in all, "Leaving a Trace" is interesting reading. I looked forward to picking it up each evening before falling asleep, my favorite reading. I was even inspired to write in the journal that I had not touched in over a year.

Johnson's primary message would seem to be that recording our lives does matter. Doing so is a way of coming to terms with them and a leaving of something of oneself behind. The key is to simply write about one's life, interests, and observations. Recently, I have had the opportunity to help my mother-in-law record the details of her terrible ordeal of being a refugee in World War II. It has been surprising to me how excited this project has made her. After almost sixty years, she had perhaps never entirely comprehended or understood these events. Somehow having someone help her write about them seemed to help facilitate this.

For those who have thought about getting started with a journal or writing one better, this book would be a good place to begin.

Summary of Leaving a Trace: On Keeping a Journal

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