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Yes, There’s a Difference Between Confessional Essays & Journaling
One focuses on craft, the latter centers on catharsis.
Journals are a safe house for feelings. Before we typed our emotions, we held notebooks in our hands. A refuge from the everyday, our journals were an escape, a place where we could be the star of our own story. We were the keeper of our dramas and intrigues, the documentarian of our lives. Our journals were the space where we could shout: this happened to me.
Beyond confession, journals also provide a space for experimentation and play. Virginia Woolf, who left behind 26 volumes of writing upon her death in 1941, “approached the diary as a kind of R&D lab for her craft” — an essential tool for the writer seeking to hone their voice and style. Many of her entries were the foundation of what would be come her most famous works of fiction and narrative non-fiction.
More than a mere tool of self-exploration, however, Woolf approached the diary as a kind of R&D lab for her craft. As her husband observes in the introduction to her collected journals, A Writer’s Diary (public library), Woolf’s journaling was “a method of practicing or trying out the art of writing.” (source)
For many years I kept a journal and it was a haven for my observations and experimentations with…
