Keeping a Writer’s Journal to Build a Healthy Relationship with Writing

In her session, Patricia will advocate for the usefulness of keeping a writer’s journal since doing so can help writers with ADHD to better engage with and reflect on their writing practices. She started keeping a journal while working with her ADHD writing coach and found it has helped her develop a healthier relationship with writing. In her presentation, Patricia will discuss three different ways she uses her writer’s journal (tracking, connecting, reflecting) and show how each of these uses addresses issues she has with writing, as a result of the way her ADHD brain functions. Patricia will provide examples from her own journals to illustrate how they can be multimodal in nature, thus expanding our conceptions of what a writer’s journal can be. She will complement her experiences with research on the power of journals and writing reflection for writers.