I’ve kept a journal since what now feels like the beginning of time. I have a cabinet in my office stacked with over a hundred college lined notebooks – (Stuart and Charlotte occasionally stage a break-in to chew on a few pages and distribute pounds of cat fur). In each stage of my life the writing in these journals shifts.

As I’ve written before on this blog, during my divorce I wrote like maybe three times a day in my journal – and then when life got on an even keel, or I was deep into writing a book, journal entries got sparse and to the point: weather reports, things going well or badly, books being read.  Lately I realize my journal writing depends on geography. When I’m in my cabin in Lake Arrowhead there’s no email, no newspaper or television, just coffee, pine trees and my journal. So I sit on the deck or at the kitchen table and pages and pages get written every single morning. But at home in Santa Monica there’s email, three newspapers, and exercise. If I don’t exercise first thing in the morning I will never exercise. If I don’t get to my writing by 9:00 it never gets done.

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When do you write in your journal? Where do you write?  And how do you keep it private? Let us know.