5 May 2025
I am not sure about anyone else, but I have no choice in it. I must write.
We all have things we are passionate about. For me it is words. The way they take a person on a journey or reveal an unknown or inspire to a better way. They seem almost magical, and I love them. I love to arrange them and play with them, to create moments and images, and convey something meaningful and true. At times in a poem or story, maybe an essay, but words that bring light, words helping the reader along the way, making their passage in the world just a little easier, more understood or pleasant or more beautiful.
We all have things we want to share with others. I have chosen words as my principal vehicle to carry my thoughts. I cannot resist the painter’s brush either. And so, I sometimes paint. Writing and painting are almost as one to me.
I have felt this way from a young age.
As a teenager, I wrote a good deal of poetry and a couple of lousy short stories, but at least I tried my hand. I hung out in the art studio at school because it felt right and the others there were kind and accepting. The passion to create artistically, particularly with words, has never left me. I have written all my life.
And I love the craft of words. It is more than simply writing to me. Though an artistic person may begin in desire and perhaps a natural gift, it must be nurtured as a craft. I wrote about this in an earlier piece. And as a craftsman, I aspire to impart a sense or feeling, to share something intimate and rare with my reader. It is to open eyes. Words are as colors to me, dabs of the light spectrum from a painter’s palette, thoughts poured out of soul onto the page, words becoming poem or novel or what have you, soul-drenched things creating an image, things having essentiality and trueness, furthering a reader’s understanding of the world or themselves, helpful things coming as fresh and honest and good. Yet the skill is never complete. I will always be the craftsman learning his trade. It is my life.
So, I began as a young poet. But what has sustained me through life’s wild crush, what has been my handhold on the rocky jagged face of a life crammed full intense, a life beautiful and overflowing in family and friends and love-filled wonder, and what has sustained me through the relentless stress of professional life? It was writing. Along the way I would pen an occasional poem or essay, sometimes letters to others. But in the main it was journaling.
I have stacks of them.
Journaling has been my keeper, my ground zero in a sometimes parched land of days. When the strain of it all would begin to destroy me, I would simply open my journal and lose myself in words, I would write and give myself to the thoughts of my heart and mind. It has offered critical retreat and a quiet place to reflect and come whole. In fact, it has often been that some short and hurried entry in my journal has spawned a fresh poem or short story, even entire novels. Journaling has been vital in keeping the flame of writing alive within. I can honestly say, it has been a place to keep it together when the times and seasons of life would seek to tear me apart. Journaling has given me voice and kept me focused on the good, those things worth pondering and giving one’s thought and life to. And it has been a place of honing my words for another’s ear.
So, let me share some thoughts on what I journal. This will give a little context to what I am saying.
I occasionally note in my journal what has happened or is happening on a particular day, but that is rare and ancillary. More often, I use my journaling to capture a phrase or expression that has crossed my mind or that someone has said for it has a music or tenor to it, conveying something meaningful in a unique way, the phrase having some quality I know I could work with or that inspires me. Perhaps it will become a poem or a story, for they do. Similarly, as I am reading scripture or perhaps another book, a particular phrase will jump out leading my thoughts in a much-expanded direction. I journal these for future reference for it is the stuff of wonder, opening new landscapes of the mind. My essays are often derived here. Sometimes they become the basis of a novel. Lastly, I use journaling to express my inner world, my deepest thoughts, personal struggles, and challenges. These, again, are fodder for the artist within me. For it is here in these dark ponderings I derive much of my work. I find along these inner passages my voice and the song of my life. These often become the very thoughts of my characters as they work through their own struggles and conflicts. My journals record the inner life of the artist. And I need this for so many good ideas and insights often just float away to be forgotten. Journaling is essential to me.
Think of it this way, the journal is a convenient traveling sketchbook or paintbox.
And we are after all just artists looking for a canvas for our thoughts.
Henry
Henry Lewis, Writer 