Book Review: 365 Journal Writing Ideas by Rossi Fox

Last week on the blog, we provided some downloadablejournals to help you document your APA, grammar, and overall writing progress. This week we’re also talking about journals and journaling, but this time in the sense of freewriting.

"Write in Journal" (c) Walt Stoneburner (CC by 2.0)

The Value of Journaling

For students looking to develop a more consistent writing habit, keeping a journal can be a low stress, judgment-free way to stretch and strengthen the writing muscle. In a journal, we can reflect not only on our personal lives—the funny things our children do and say, our family dramas and celebrations, our adventures (or misadventures)—but also on our lives as students and scholars, including our learning progress and academic goals. And unlike a reflection paper written for a class, these private pages can provide a break or release from the rigors and structure of academic writing, giving us the opportunity to say what we really mean, to release frustrations, even to come up with new ideas or make new discoveries.

If you have never kept a journal before, getting started can seem to be an overwhelming task. The white glare of a blank page can quickly shut down the best of intentions. And even if you, like me, are a lifelong journal writer, you may still find yourself challenged to make writing a daily practice, especially on those days when you feel you have nothing to say (or you simply lack the energy or motivation to say it). In moments like these, a guide to journal writing can be an invaluable resource, filled with inspiring prompts and sage advice—a welcome answer to the question, “What do I write about today?”  

Image via Amazon.com

The Rossi Fox Approach

Rossi Fox, the self-published author of 365 Journal Writing Ideas, appears at first glance to offer such a guide. In the opening pages of his book, Fox promises to teach the reader not only how to begin a journal practice, but also how to view the journal as “a place to remember where you have been (memoir), appreciate where you are now (gratitude), and decide on where you are going (goals)” (p. 2). The concept of the book is admirable and the design is interesting. Fox divides the content into five main sections: Tips and Tricks, Prompts, Weekly Actions, Photography Prompts, and Quotes. In the first section, Fox walks the reader through some of the essential tasks of beginning a daily writing practice, everything from selecting a journal size and style to getting past that difficult first page to incorporating photographs.

In the second section—the heart of the guide—he provides a series of 365 writing prompts, one for each day of the year, to guide the reader’s writing practice. The Weekly Actions in the third section are intended, as Fox puts it, to “make the next 52 weeks of your life just that little bit more interesting” (p. 3). The task for Week 8, for example, is to “go somewhere different,” recording “the sights, the sounds, the smells, and the people” in the journal (p. 151). The Photography Prompts section includes a list of words, such as shadows, flight, and fragile, that the reader is to interpret through a series of photographs and include in the journal. Finally, the Quotes section is simply that: a series of quotes that Fox, a self-confessed “quote addict,” provides as an additional source of inspiration.

My Verdict

Unfortunately, while I wanted to love the book, the execution prevented me from embracing it. For example, I appreciated the diversity of writing prompts—some designed to trigger a fictional response, some a photograph, others a memory or gratitude—but after the first 20 or so suggestions, they began to seem repetitive and, for me, less than inspiring. Also, while I value the wisdom found in many collected quotations, I think if Fox could have been more selective in the quotes he chose to share, I would have felt more inclined to actually read—or at least skim—this final section of the book. As it was, fifty pages of quotations seemed a bit much.

But perhaps the biggest hurdle for me was the writing itself. As a reader, I need to trust the author’s voice before I can take seriously what he or she has to say, and when the writing is fragmented, wordy, or simply unpolished, as Fox’s is, I quickly lose interest. 

This outcome is unfortunate, because the book does contain a few gems worth discovering. For example, I appreciated some of the more open-ended prompts, including questions such as “What do you need to accept?” and “What are you waiting for?” (pp. 32-33), which allowed my writing mind to take off in a number of different directions. I also liked how Fox helps the reader conquer a fear of the blank page by providing a list of intentions to be copied onto that first page, with the gentle reminder that “a done something is better than a perfect nothing” (p. 26). Ultimately, however, I felt distracted by the quality of the writing and thus disinclined to rely on Fox as a writing guide.

Fox, R. (2013). 365 journal writing ideas. Lexington, KY: Author.

Practice: For those of you interested in beginning a journal writing practice, whether to reflect on your personal life, your academic life, or a mixture of the two, I encourage you to begin your first entry by responding to Fox’s excellent open-ended question, “What are you waiting for?” How you interpret this question doesn’t matter, but try to write for at least five minutes and/or fill one page. See what your writing reveals to you. And enjoy the process! Let us know how it goes in the comments.

Dissertation Editor Jen Johnson has been with the Walden Writing Center since 2007. As a writer and former writing instructor, she has a particular interest in helping students craft well-written doctoral research, from the sentence level up.

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