How To Keep a Diary

The first step of keeping a diary is to find a suitable notebook.

This is the time to decide if you want to just do a plain diary with no drawings, or if you’ll want to do one with doodles on each page. If you are just writing in your diary (no drawings), you’ll want one with lines in it. If you are doing one with a lot of doodles in it, you’ll want a notebook with blank pages. I personally like drawing a lot in mine, so I’m currently using a blank notebook.

You could write in your diary every day, but if you are busy you could do a slightly longer entry once or twice a week. Or you could write every other day, every third day..the possibilities are endless!

Okay, let’s get to the actual writing part! Since I’m using a blank notebook I start out by drawing lines on my page-lightly in pencil so that I can erase them later. You might be wondering why I don’t just get a notebook with pre-printed lines and blank spaces for drawing. I like the look of straight writing with no lines under it, and often times I don’t know how much I’ll draw that day, and the pre-printed lines aren’t typically where I want them to be.

I draw my lines so that they are 1 cm apart. This leaves enough space for me to write. If you have smaller or larger writing, you can adjust your line sizing.

Then I’ll write my entry, and lightly sketch little drawings I want to do on the entry. If you are wondering, I do know how to write in cursive. I just decided to write in print because I wanted to make my print look neater. Since I’m writing every day, I’ll hopefully have neater print once I fill up this book! You, of course, can use either cursive or print. You might pick one over the other because you want to practice it more, or you might like the look of one better.  

You might find it a bit hard to think of what to draw, and that’s fine. You can draft out your entry in your head, and then think of what you did that day. Did you see a black dog? Did you eat pizza? Did you stub your toe? Draw a dog, pizza, or a frown on your face because your toe hurts.

The pen I’m using is a Sharpie ultra fine. I checked when I first started this book that it wouldn’t bleed through the pages since I wanted to write on both sides of the page. You should do this too if you decide to write in pen.

Taking my black sharpie, I’ll trace over my pencil lines. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want. You can just color the pencil lines in. However, I really like how the sharpie and colored pencil look together.

After I trace over the pencil lines, I’ll erase any stray marks. This has to be done before coloring it in with colored pencils because after you color, it’s hard to remove the pencil marks. Then I’ll color it in with my colored pencils.

Once I’m done with all that, I go back and erase all of the lines that I lightly drew. I’ll touch up anything that I think needs fixing, make sure that the date is on the top of the page, and I’m done!