Suleika Jaouad brilliantly illustrates the art of journalling in The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life, which she published in 2025. In explaining the practice, she drew on examples and stories from her own life and that of others. The book grew out of a 100-Day Project she started during the Covid-19 Pandemic. Suleika, experiencing the negative effects of isolation, decided to start a newsletter to encourage people to start journalling daily to manage their challenging situations as a result of the Pandemic.
Suleika provided a short essay and writing prompt with each newsletter to encourage people to write about their experiences. She first approached some well-known people she knew but before long the project went truly viral beyond anyone’s expectations. Participants in the project were encouraged to share their journalling to create a sense of community and shared challenge. The Book of Alchemy draws some of these contributions together. In the process, Suleika shares her own experiences and wisdom, sometimes painfully achieved, as well as the insights and personal changes experienced by the contributors to the book.
Each chapter has an introduction by Suleika around some theme such as “On Beginning” and “On Memory”. The contributions of people such as Sharon Salzberg, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Esther Perel are grouped under one of the ten chapters, with ten contributors in each chapter. Thus the book provides essays and writing prompts for our own 100-day project.
In her book, Suleika, as well as many contributors, offer suggestions on how to overcome blockages to writing a journal. At the outset, she points out the need to avoid expectations about output volumes, just the admonition to write daily. Suleika explains that there were times when she had to accept a paragraph in her journal as her output for the day. She points out that no one has to see what you have written. There is no coercion (apart from self-messages) to achieve coherence, cohesion, clarity or content in a journal entry.
Overcoming blockages
Suleika found that by reading a poem or an excerpt from something someone else has written (e.g. a memoir or novel), she was able to progress her writing even when initially “stuck”. She maintains that reading can prompt ideas, offer creative solutions and provide inspiration. It can also propose alternative perspectives, stimulate lines of enquiry and identify new aspects on which to focus. Erin Khar, in her contribution to the book, states that when she feels blocked she pulls a single sentence from one of her favourite essays or books to use as a starting point. She often uses the sentence as the opening for her journal entry. Erin is the author of Strung Out,
Ash Parsons, in her story in the book, discusses her “Ten Images” approach to journal writing.. She had adopted a son who was premature, football-size and confined to an Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Being with him and holding him close to her was “all-consuming and not conducive to writing”. She had to rely on creating “mental notes of images” of whatever was around her, e.g. the scrub room used before entering the ICU. She would write about the images once she returned home after hospital visits. Unwittingly she was effectively “writing her life”.
Marie Howe, author of New and Selected Poems, shared her “Radical Receptivity” story in the Book of Alchemy and explained her own process of journal writing. When she is overcome with the pressures of her “to-do” list, she clears her desk and gathers a pile of clean paper and begins to write with her non-dominant hand after setting a timer for a specified number of minutes. She then repeats the cycle and finds often that her mind slows down and she can more readily access her subconscious.
Suleika suggests too that we don’t have to only resort to writing for our daily journalling. We can draw pictures, paint with water colours, build a collage (e.g. from photos), or create a poem. Kim Rosen reminds us that writing poetry can be transformative. Poetry, like other forms of journalling, can enable us to “blend opposites and break frames”.
Carmen Radley offers the idea of mind maps as a way forward when we are stuck. She adopts the practice of creating a mind map by putting a year, place or person at the centre. The mind map can be developed by extending out from the centre using any other items of association such as words, feelings or events. Carmen describes the process as surprising and exhilarating as it effectively “mines the memory for things long buried”.
Overcoming the self-critic
Suleika suggests that we have to find our own ways to overcome the self-critic so that we can “let the words flow without self-censure”. There is a natural tendency to be self-critical, to perpetuate negative self-stories. She proposes the idea of addressing the ego directly by saying “You are sabotaging my writing, be quiet!” The processes of challenging expectations (about output and quality), writing with the non-dominant hand and writing freehand are also ways to help overcome the “internal censor”.
Even the very best and most experienced writers have to deal with the inner critic. Dani Shapiro, author of 11 books, suggests that no matter what you are attempting to write “you must first gather up an unreasonable, unearned confidence bordering on lunacy”. She talks about the inner voices that say something like, “You will fall flat on your face”, “People have done this before”, “Who do think you are to talk about your life?”, “How many followers do you have on the Internet?”. Dani ignores these voices and tells herself, “Here goes nothing!”. She says to get to this point in self-awareness and beyond self-censure, you need to believe that you have “nothing to lose”.
Even highly successful writers such as Elizabeth Gilbert have to deal with negative thoughts that can attack self-esteem and derail creative endeavours. After the outstanding success of her first book, Eat, Pray, Love, she was beset by negative thinking about her second book and whether it would be good enough – the challenge of expectations, our own and that of others. Elizabeth addressed the related anxiety in her TED Talk, Success, failure and the drive to keep creating. She found that reflection, meditation, mindfulness practices and writing herself “daily letters of love” enabled her to overcome the natural inclination to “self-hatred”. She explains this “letters of love” process in Suleika’s book and offers a writing prompt based on this approach.
Why people journal
Suleika explains that people journal for all kinds of reasons, reflecting where they are at in life. Some use journalling to deal with grief, to manage transitions (such as leaving home for college), to gain self-understanding, to manage a relationship break-up or to help them to live with a chronic or terminal illness.
People who journal find that the process is transformative – they gain new perspectives, insights and creative ways of moving forward in their life. Suleika describes the process of journal writing as alchemy – a metaphor for inner transformation or purification. She maintains that journalling creates space for exploring alternative responses to those generated by our habituated behaviours. In her view, journalling provides the tools necessary “to engage with discomfort, to peel back the layers, to uncover your truest, most laid-bare self”.
Reflection
I was stuck for what to write for this blog post until I started reading The Book of Alchemy by Suleika. Her book provides 100 essays and writing prompts by accomplished writers as well as extended essays by Suleika at the start of each chapter. There are numerous prompts available online including poetry prompts by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. Rosemerry contends that poetry enables us to blend opposites, break mental frames and change perspectives.
The barriers to daily journalling are typically internal – our own self-criticism, mental blockages and excuses we give ourselves (such as not enough time). The secret is to start small and build on an existing daily habit like having a cup of coffee or undertaking an exercise routine. What will help to maintain the habit of daily journalling is develop your own personal strategies to deal with expectations, mental blockages and self-criticism. Suleika and her hundred contributors offer numerous suggestions for strategies that you can employ to achieve these goals.
As Suleika and her contributors attest, there are numerous benefits to daily journalling, not the least being that we can grow in mindfulness and tap into “flow” as we experience “being-in-the-zone”. As we commit to daily journalling we can grow in self-awareness, enhance our creativity, progress a writing project, and find creative solutions to life’s daily challenges.
If you need community support to start your journalling, you can join a journalling club or start one of your own as Sheri Campbell did (she provides some guidance for others who want to do the same). You can also access Suleika’s Journalling Club Guide here.
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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)
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