Creative Journal Writing by Stephanie Dowrick: A Review

When I began to read Stephanie Dowrick's Creative Journal Writing, I was quite pleased with her overall voice and tone which is soft and gentle in quality, drawing you in to the pleasures of a discovery-based journal writing practice; the furthest thing from the mind is a sense of obligation or doing it wrong.

She provides a series of wonderfully enlightening journal exercises, or really questions, focused on a specific topic, with encouragement to write down associations and noting your feelings and your body's responses as you are writing.

Sprinkled throughout are example quotations from other journal writers on the topics she chooses, each with a larger sized quotation mark, which, to me, remind me of collage with an artistic flair, instead of using the customary sized mark. I found this visually pleasing throughout the book.

Overall, Stephanie provides a restful quality to her approach with creative journal writing, one that is gentle, kind and insightful.

She also includes a fabulous journal writing list of 125 prompts you can choose intuitively by number rather than topic. I love this approach since it's a surprise each time you use it.

I highly recommend this book for all journal writers, and especially those who may feel intimidated by the process.