See ideas about keeping a reading journal.
Journal writing richly rewards anyone who engages in it regularly. You can write anywhere or anytime: all you need is a few minutes to record an entry and the willingness to set down what you think and feel. Your journal will become a mine studded with priceless nuggets — thoughts, observations, reactions, and revelations that are yours for the taking. As you write, you can rifle your well-stocked journal for topics, insights, examples, and other material. The best type of journal is the one that’s useful to you.
Reflective Journals. When you write in your journal, put less emphasis on recording what happened, as you would in a diary, than on reflecting about what you do or see, hear or read, learn or believe. An entry can be a list or an outline, a paragraph or an essay, a poem or a letter you don’t intend to send. Describe a person or a place, set down a conversation, or record insights into actions. Consider your pet peeves, fears, dreams, treasures, or moral dilemmas. Use your experience as a writer to nourish and inspire your writing, recording what worked, what didn’t, and how you reacted to each.
For more on responding to reading, see Ch. 2.
For responsive journal prompts, see the end of each selection in A Writer’s Reader.
Responsive Journals. Sometimes you respond to something in particular — your assigned reading, a classroom discussion, a movie, a conversation, or an observation. Faced with a long paper, you might assign yourself a focused response journal so you have plenty of material to use.
Warm-Up Journals. To prepare for an assignment, you can group ideas, scribble outlines, sketch beginnings, capture stray thoughts, record relevant material. Of course, a quick comment may turn into a draft.
E-Journals. Once you create a file and make entries by date or subject, you can record ideas, feelings, images, memories, and quotations. You will find it easy to copy and paste inspiring e-mail, quotations from Web pages, or images and sounds. Always identify the source of copied material so that you won’t later confuse it with your original writing.
Blogs. Like traditional journals, “Web logs” aim for frank, honest, immediate entries. Unlike journals, they often explore a specific topic and may be available publicly on the Web or privately by invitation. Especially in an online class, you might blog about your writing or research processes.