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From the Larksong January Newsletter 2025

Musing about the New Year

What can I say at the strange beginning of this year that writers might need to hear? I’ve been thinking a lot about the value of writing in changing or difficult times. That’s probably no surprise, given that writing is both my vocation and avocation. As our tagline says, Larksong is “where writing happens.” I’m thinking about the act of writing—the specific act of putting words down on paper or into a computer—as well as its role and value in the wider community, culture, history, and the timeline in which a writer lives.
 
I’ve been reading about the Mass Observation project from the World War II era in Britain. The project, which ran from 1937 to 1967, was designed to record the mundane details of British life across every level of class and location. According to an article in Time magazine, Brits from all walks of life were tasked with keeping journals about their lives, “recording the public’s behavior in places like pubs and war memorials, as well as people’s attitudes about topics as varied as football pools, eating, and facial hair... They wrote about the intimate details of their lives as well as their thoughts and feelings about the world around them... The result is an intimate portrait of British life that is also completely individual.”
           
The journals from this project are now considered an invaluable resource for historians, sociologists, cultural and social anthropologists, artists, educators, and literary scholars. As the founders described it, it is “an anthropology of ourselves” spanning 30 years, covering, among other things, the build-up to World War II, the war itself, and its aftermath.
 
As far as I know, there’s no similar public project underway anywhere in the world right now. If you know of one, please let me know!
 
Thinking about journaling reminds me of the book that first sparked my desire to keep a journal when I was a young teen: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. As you no doubt know, this is the journal of a Jewish teenager chronicling her family’s two years (1942–44) in hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands. The book was first published in 1947—two years after Anne’s death in a concentration camp—and later became a classic of war literature. It wasn’t written for the world; it was a young girl writing to make sense of her experiences and feelings about life. Yet it has impacted millions of people across the world.
 
I’ve been a journal writer my entire adult life. I have boxes of journals filled with the mundane ramblings and earnest seekings of someone who finds that the point of the pen is the most reliable place to discover clarity, wisdom, mystery, creativity, peace, release, solace, and a whole lot of things I don’t even know I need. I write them because writing helps me make sense of life and the times I live in. I keep them because I want to be able to look back and see how things really were. I want to remember my life as best I can.
 
The benefits of journaling are well-documented. Regular journal writing has been credited with everything from lowering blood pressure to improving memory, brain health, creativity, and joy. It doesn’t matter how you do it—the writing itself becomes an act of self-preservation.
 
Over the years, I have taught creative journaling to kids and adults. Larksong has a monthly art journal club for members who are crafters and artists. Type “journaling” into your search bar, and you’ll find thousands of books, ideas, techniques, apps, templates, and prompts to help you get started or keep going. It’s unbelievably easy to do, and as the examples above show, journaling can be exponentially beneficial—not just for the individual writer but for the world.
I recently saw the new movie about Bob Dylan, A Complete Unknown. The timeline covers his early years, from obscurity to fame, in a world changing as quickly as he was. It offers fascinating insights into those transitions. The words of his song keep running through my mind: “The times, they are a-changin’.” That was true in 1963 when he wrote it, and it’s true now. Watching the film, I was struck by how important writing—songwriting, in this case—was to the events and the people living through them. Now and always, writing matters.
 
And that is the point I really want you to take from this: writing matters—your writing matters. Whether you’re doing it for yourself or others, for publication, posterity, or kindling—now is the time to write. Grab your pens, charge up your laptops. Join us at Larksong or cozy up in your own living room. Let’s write—together and alone.
 
We could change the world.

Hope to hear from you soon. 

Karen Gettert Shoemaker
Director, Larksong Writers Place

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