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Feed the Monster (by moi)
The Creative Goods by Jill Margo - a feminist and justice-based advice column for creators with conundrums
Noted by Jillian Hess - “Tips from the world’s best note takers”
Subtle Maneuvers by Mason Currey - on routines, rituals, and wriggling through a creative life
Austin Kleon - weekly art, writing, and creative inspiration
Katherine May’s post How to Keep a Writer’s Notebook
Elissa Altman’s post The Notebook on My Desk
Elissa Altman’s post The Quiet Terror of Keeping a Journal
Both are True by Alex Dobrenko - a singular and hilarious voice
Café Anne by Anne Kadet - “It’s a wonderful world—meet the inhabitants!”
The New Diary by Tristine Rainer
Feel Something, Make Something by Caitlin Metz
The Creative Journal by Lucia Capacchione
What It Is by Lynda Barry
Picture This by Lynda Barry
Syllabus by Lynda Barry
The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen
Opening Up by Writing it Down by James W. Pennebaker
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
Drawing from Life: the Journal as Art by Jennifer New
Joan Didion - On Keeping a Notebook
What’s All This about Journaling?
Several Short Sentences about Writing
Working with your Hands is Good for your Brain
Susan Cain: As Close to Magic as You Can Get
Journaling Her Way Through Cancer for the Third Time - a NYT article about Suleika Jaouad’s “The Book of Alchemy”. Ignore the annoying third paragraph.
Suleika Jaouad on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, May 6th, 2025
The Pentel Brush Pen (washable ink)
The Pentel Pocket Brush (water-resistant ink)
Lamy fountain pens
Midori notebook
Moleskine soft-cover journal
Leuchtturm notebooks
Lots of journal ideas at Opus
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And this important message, via Austin Kleon:
“Nothing in your education has taught you that what you notice is important,” writes Verlyn Klinkenborg in Several Short Sentences About Writing.
But everything you notice is important.
Let me say that a different way:
If you notice something, it’s because it’s important.
But what you notice depends on what you allow yourself to notice,
And that depends on what you feel authorized, permitted to notice
In a world where we’re trained to disregard our perceptions.Who’s going to give you the authority to feel that what you notice is important?
It will have to be you.
The authority you feel has a great deal to do with how you write, and what you write,
With your ability to pay attention to the shape and meaning of your own thoughts
And the value of your own perceptions.Being a writer is an act of perpetual self-authorization.
No matter who you are.
Only you can authorize yourself….
No one else can authorize you.
No one.
“This doesn’t happen overnight,” he writes. So how does one begin?
Start by learning to recognize what interests you.
Most people have been taught that what they notice doesn’t matter,
So they never learn how to notice,
Not even what interests them.
Or they assume that the world has been completely pre-noticed,
Already sifted and sorted and categorized
By everyone else, by people with real authority.
And so they write about pre-authorized subjects in pre-authorized language.