I tried something over this past year that I’ve never done before: I journaled every single day!

I have kept various journals all my life, starting at the age of six. I have a computer file of journal entries from the past sixteen years, but those efforts were never very consistent, and most of the entries were written sporadically—sometimes with six months between them.

But last February, I saw a writer doing a journaling challenge: writing a journal entry every day for three months. While I admired her consistency, I assumed that this was something I could never do. Yet it looked like such a fun challenge, so I decided that one month would not be so difficult to keep up with. I could try it for one month.

I got out an adorable journal and began writing. I challenged myself to write at least one full page each day, because I knew that after a few days I would resort to writing a mere one or two lines.

I did something different with this journal: before this, there was never anything visual prompting me to journal before. I always put my journal away somewhere, and that computer file certainly didn’t take up space. But this time, I kept my journal where I would see it every single day: in the stack of current reads next to my bed.

And it reminded me! Every evening I would write a page. In the past, my journal entries would often be a rundown of what I’d done that day. But this time I shook things up. Some pages did describe something that I’d done that day, but other pages were dedicated to gratitude lists, memories, or genealogical research. Other pages were creative: poems, observations about books or movies, or analyses of my writing dilemmas.

After journaling this way for entire year—hardly ever missing a day—I can say that this process has changed me as a writer. I never would have thought that keeping a consistent journal would help me as a writer, but it has. It’s much easier to jump into a piece of fiction writing now than it used to be—I have that consistency habit down. Writing—and subsequently re-reading—my entries on creative problems has helped me to identify patterns in my process that need to be adjusted; reading older entries reminds me of how I tackled problems before and how to approach them now. Two of those poems turned into a picture book manuscript. Even ranking my favorite characters in a book—something I do when I can’t think of a good topic!—has been helpful for thinking about characters in new ways.

Needless to say, I’m going to continue my practice of journaling one page a day, and I encourage you to do the same if you’re in need of a boost of creativity!