Why journaling helps authors

There are lots of benefits in writing daily within a journal, along with those well documented for mental health, there are great reasons on how it also helps with increasing your skill as an author. Journaling has been shown to help deal with negative thoughts, stress, anxiety and depression, so it is certainly worth considering taking up this practice for many of us (regardless of our writing aspirations).
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But for those who are looking at journaling purely from a writing viewpoint, here are several reasons why you should start writing one today.

It gets you to start writing

This is a bit obvious, however, for many authors the act of staring at a blank page can be a fear inducing experience which results in procrastination. Journaling daily forces you to just write something on a regular basis, it helps to develop your skills and changes your mindset about starting something new.
 
Overcoming writer’s block

Leading on from the first reason, this daily practice and facing a blank page each morning helps you to get into a creative state a great deal easier, writing in a journal without any pressure is a massive boost to creativity and over time allows you to adopt this state of flow when writing on any project.
 
Developing ideas

Writing in a journal is practiced by many authors, business leaders and successful individuals throughout every walk of life, it enables you to get ideas, thoughts, and inspirations down on the page and explore them further. In some cases, you may come back to those ideas at a later date, but once on paper, you’re less likely to forget them.

Practice makes perfect

It has been said, that to become an expert in anything, you should put in at least ten thousand hours practice (and that, is just under 417 days!) So, writing each day 200 – 300 words within a journal helps increase your experience and move a little close to that expert level.
 
It removes any pressure
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Writing in a journal is just for you, you don’t have to share what you write with anyone, so you can do what you like. There really is no pressure at all, and this is great, it enables you to write without fear and be creative, some of it will be great and some of it will be utter crap, but again, it doesn’t matter, just write.