Maybe you are convinced that journaling is a good practice to promote creativity and help you plan for success, but you’ve never formed the habit and you’re not sure where to start. Maybe you are already an avid journal-keeper, but you just need fresh ideas to keep the momentum going.
There are many options out there for journaling ideas. I’ve given you a few already, but you can always use new material right?
While creative free-style journaling is a great way to work through writer’s block, another way is to do a quote journal. No, I don’t mean keep a journal of your favorite quotes, although this is a good first-step. I mean journaling your thoughts about different quotes.
You’ve seen some examples of this in my quote posts, but in case you aren’t sure where to start, I want to help you start your own quote journal. Starting a quote journal is a three-step process.
Step One- Collect Quotes
To start the quote journal, you first need to collect quotes.
Do you already have favorite quotes you keep around you? Collect those into one spot.
Do you have a favorite book or author? As you read, jot down the quotes from the book that resonate with you. Or you can do a search on Goodreads for quotes from a favorite author.
Do you not have a good place to start? Do a google search for quotes and collect the ones you like.
You can even collect quotes from people in your every day life. If someone says something you like, remember it and write it down.
Do you still need some inspiration? Check out some of my quote articles to get inspiration. All you’re doing is collecting quotes that resonate with you to write about later.
Collect as many quotes as you want. You won’t necessarily use all of them, but you’ll at least have a pool to pick from.
Write down all the quotes you collect in the same place (on a computer file or in a notebook, you get the idea) so you can find them easily when you’re ready to move on to the next step.
Step Two- Set-up Your Quote Journal
Once you have all the quotes you want collected, it’s time to transfer some of them to the official quote journal. I recommend starting with a 30-day supply of quotes to get you through a month of journaling.
For each page of your journal, pick one or two quotes to write down, spaced out to give you room to write your own thoughts about them. This will give you plenty of room to write your own ideas and make it easier to find your thoughts for each quote if/when you go back to review your journal.
Writing one quote per page will better guarantee room to add further thoughts later, but this is really up to your preference. Sometimes it’s interesting to see how your ideas change over time.
How you arrange the quotes is entirely up to you. You can just pick the first 30 quotes you wrote down, you can go through your collection and find your favorites, you can arrange them by the person they originated from, however you want to choose.
Step Three- Begin Writing
Once you have the journal set-up, you can begin the writing process. Once again, how you choose to do this is up to you.
You can go in order of how you have the quotes written out, or you can flip through the journal and pick a quote that inspires you for that day. However you want to do it, each day pick a quote and write your thoughts about it.
This could be as simple as one or two sentences about it, or a full paragraph. You can write what the quote makes you think of, why it inspires you, how you can apply it to a certain situation, whatever comes to mind when you look at the quote. What you say in your journal does not have to correspond to the original intent of the quote, it’s about how it resonates with you.
That’s it. The quote journal is that simple, and it gives you a great outlet to process your ideas.
Have you ever tried a journal like this? Tell us about your experience in the comments.
Penny Layne Writes 
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