Rating: 
Summary: Invaluable and Deserving a Place on Your Bookshelf
Review: As someone who writes for hours every day, I am challenged by adding to my writing "chores" with personal journaling. Then along comes Sheila Bender with a provocative book that actually makes me want to grab my journal and write for my own purposes. Sheila has stitched together a quilt of prompts, observations and samples that will convince even the most reluctant writer to pour her heart out in a journal. While Sheila's book is invaluable for those of us who write, it's equally useful for those who want to write or those who want to take a more active role in learning to record memories. In fact, I'm using her book to help me improve my young son's writing. Sheila's methods for explaining common writer's techniques are so clear and compelling that even a 12-year-old can grasp immediately what she suggests. All in all, this book is a winner and deserves a place on every thinking person's bookshelves.
Rating:
Summary: Invaluable and Deserving a Place on Your Bookshelf
Review: As someone who writes for hours every day, I am challenged by adding to my writing "chores" with personal journaling. Then along comes Sheila Bender with a provocative book that actually makes me want to grab my journal and write for my own purposes. Sheila has stitched together a quilt of prompts, observations and samples that will convince even the most reluctant writer to pour her heart out in a journal. While Sheila's book is invaluable for those of us who write, it's equally useful for those who want to write or those who want to take a more active role in learning to record memories. In fact, I'm using her book to help me improve my young son's writing. Sheila's methods for explaining common writer's techniques are so clear and compelling that even a 12-year-old can grasp immediately what she suggests. All in all, this book is a winner and deserves a place on every thinking person's bookshelves.
Rating:
Summary: KEEPING A JOURNAL YOU LOVE
Review: I can usually tell a good book by the number of tabs and yellow markings I have made during the reading. KEEPING A JOURNAL YOU LOVE is riddled with my yellow lines like a broken-trail map depicting my progress through the territory of journal writing. The markers could be porcupine quills poking their way out of the pages. Here I found advice like: "Keeping a journal is a form of mental and emotional exercise. It helps keep the mind limber and the soul supple, the better to get at the root of your own curiosities and obsessions as a writer." Or "I like the instant gratification. I like seeing my thoughts put into words; I enjoy the sense of accomplishment when I complete a good writing session."One will find not only excellent REASONS for journal writing, but also a multitude of IDEAS and STRATEGIES for keeping a journal that best fits the personality of the writer. It is a book to be enjoyed repeatedly as one seeks fresh ways of observing life.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Ideas
Review: I met the author at a book signing, and she had plenty of good ideas as to how to keep a journal. This a a good book, not the usual collection of tried ideas on how to get writing and keep writing.
Rating: 
Summary: Wasn't too impressed...
Review: I read this book, and I thought a lot of it was common sense, atleast to me. I actually thought the author talked down in tone a bit to the reader on a few occasions. I bought this book to help me write better, and there were a handful of techniques in the book that were helpful, but not worth buying the whole book for...
Rating:
Summary: I've definitely read worse books on the subject...
Review: I was particularly intrigued by this book because it addresses so many areas of benefit to writers. Its suggestions can help new writers, (and experienced ones), become more aware of the world around them and more attuned to desriptive images.
Anne Jones
Rating:
Summary: Enhance Your Daily Life As Well As Your Writing
Review: Journal writing can open up a whole new world to every type of writer. No matter what your writing experience, Keeping a Journal You Love shows you how to get the most out of your journal. Each page contains advice on how keeping a journal can lead to enhanced writing. You'll also sample real journal entries from 15 respected fiction and non-fiction writers. At the end of each journal entry, instructional exercises are provided so you can capitalize on your own journal. You'll learn how to create story ideas from your own life experiences and develop a deeper sense of your own writing as well. Journaling examples show you how a simple log of one's daily life can spawn complete novels. There's also a special section filled with strategies you can use in your journal entries. Plus, a bonus chapter contains informative tips on how you can create journal-keeping groups and communities. If you're currently keeping a journal, this book will bring a whole new level to your writing. If you're just beginning a journal, every exercise will help you develop page after page of beautiful words.
Rating:
Summary: I've definitely read worse books on the subject...
Review: The most interesting part of this book is the exerpts from other writers' journals. There's not a whole lot of content otherwise, though. Each excerpt is followed by some suggested exercises (most of which I found boring) and some examples (written by the author) of how you might do the exercise...which are surprisingly uninspiring.
Still searching for a straight-forward and practical book on this subject....
Rating:
Summary: some redeeming features
Review: This author likes extravagant phrasing and wants to coach you in how to write "writerly" writing. She loves the extended metaphor and gives lots of suggestions for writing fancy. Tom Robbins can take metaphors to ridiculous heights (or depths), so read one of his novels and you'll get an idea of how to do it, and maybe why not to. This emphasis on learning style over content made me as frustrated as a two-year-old playing with his big brother's Tonka truck fire engine but not being able to figure out how to raise the ladder because there's a little catch he needed to release, but if his mom hears him crying and brings over two soft chocolate chip cookies and a glass of milk in his favorite little Winnie the Pooh cup, he feels better -- hey, people this kind of exercise isn't why I write a journal. However, there are redeeming elements. The author has excerpted several interesting journals from successful writers, and their passages provide a peek into the creative mind, though the "exercises" following each one tend to reduce them to formulas. She'll take Pam Houston's letters -- which pop out as long, fully formed essays, rather intimidating if one doesn't write that way oneself -- and asks you to copy the format, then "when you feel finished, try for an ending like Houston's where she lists details and images from her Texas trip, saying in each moment that she sees her love for her correspondee. What images and details will you list? How do you see your love in them?" She doesn't say at the end, "Now compare your writing to Houston's, which you read before you wrote your own entries, and feel like an utter failure." As writing instruction, this book falls in the river and drowns. As a collection of themed essays by good writers in journal format, it's slim but worthy.
Rating:
Summary: some redeeming features
Review: This author likes extravagant phrasing and wants to coach you in how to write "writerly" writing. She loves the extended metaphor and gives lots of suggestions for writing fancy. Tom Robbins can take metaphors to ridiculous heights (or depths), so read one of his novels and you'll get an idea of how to do it, and maybe why not to. This emphasis on learning style over content made me as frustrated as a two-year-old playing with his big brother's Tonka truck fire engine but not being able to figure out how to raise the ladder because there's a little catch he needed to release, but if his mom hears him crying and brings over two soft chocolate chip cookies and a glass of milk in his favorite little Winnie the Pooh cup, he feels better -- hey, people this kind of exercise isn't why I write a journal. However, there are redeeming elements. The author has excerpted several interesting journals from successful writers, and their passages provide a peek into the creative mind, though the "exercises" following each one tend to reduce them to formulas. She'll take Pam Houston's letters -- which pop out as long, fully formed essays, rather intimidating if one doesn't write that way oneself -- and asks you to copy the format, then "when you feel finished, try for an ending like Houston's where she lists details and images from her Texas trip, saying in each moment that she sees her love for her correspondee. What images and details will you list? How do you see your love in them?" She doesn't say at the end, "Now compare your writing to Houston's, which you read before you wrote your own entries, and feel like an utter failure." As writing instruction, this book falls in the river and drowns. As a collection of themed essays by good writers in journal format, it's slim but worthy.
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