Episode 7: What Journaling Can't Give You (That Creative Writing Can)

What’s the difference between journaling and creative writing - and which one are you being called towards right now? In today’s episode from The Writing Shed, I’m exploring the beautiful, sometimes blurry line between writing to process your own life and writing to create a story beyond yourself. Journaling can be a mirror. It helps us untangle thoughts, emotions, conversations, worries, memories, and all the things that circle in our heads at three in the morning. Creative writing can be a doorway. It gives us permission to become someone else for a while - a character, a voice, a world - and sometimes, strangely, that distance brings us even closer to the truth. In this episode, I talk about: ✨ why journaling and creative writing are not quite the same thing ✨ how journaling helps us process and pay attention ✨ how fiction can help us say true things in disguise ✨ why creating a character can sometimes reveal more than writing directly about ourselves ✨ a simple 10-minute writing invitation to try the kind of writing you usually avoid So, are you the journal writer who’s secretly curious about fiction? Or the fiction writer who keeps avoiding the journal? Either way, there may be a page waiting for you. Grab a cuppa, settle into the Shed, and let’s begin. ☕️ --------- Try this week’s writing invitation: If you usually journal, write for 10 minutes beginning with: "She walked into the room and…" Follow her. Don’t plan. Just see where she goes. If you usually write fiction but avoid journaling, write for 10 minutes beginning with: "A true thing about today is…" No pressure. No performance. Just one honest page. --------- Resources mentioned in this episode: ✍️ Feel. Write. Blossom. - An expressive writing eBook for reflection, self-discovery, and journaling. → https://danielapescuma.com/tws-produc... 💃🏻 Waltz into Writing - A creative writing experience using Listen, Feel, Write to help the words begin. → https://danielapescuma.com/waltz-into... ✨ Find more writing resources, courses, podcast episodes, and cosy creative invitations here → https://danielapescuma.com/step-into-...