Keeping a journal can change your life. How to start a daily practice : NPR

The transformative power of keeping a daily journal

July 31, 20255:00 AM ET, By Marielle Segarra

Malaka Gharib 19-Minute Listen

Writer Suleika Jaouad has been keeping a journal for as long as she could hold a pen. It got her through her battle with leukemia at age 22, life after treatment and then the pandemic.

But at a certain point, “I was starting to get bored of the sound of my own voice and grievances,” she says.

So she began reading the diaries and journals of her favorite writers for inspiration: Isabelle Eberhardt, Audre Lorde, Sylvia Plath and Susan Sontag.

Jaouad would pick a passage at random to read before journaling and found it had a “kaleidoscopic effect” on her writing, she says. It allowed the “light to fall differently,” changing her perspective and creating new ways of thinking.

She expands on this approach to journaling in her latest book, The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life, published this spring. It’s a collection of essays and writing prompts from 100 writers and artists, including poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib, writer and director Lena Dunham and illustrator Oliver Jeffers.

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