The Journal
Dispatches from the field, the desk, and everywhere in between.
April 2026: Spring Files
Christabel's Journal
Archives
Time Machine
April 2, 2026
The first entry in a new journal always feels significant somehow. Putting pen to paper is like meeting a new person whom I expect to spend a lot of time with. In some ways, that is true.
Maybe that person is a future me. Maybe it is a future reader — tomorrow or ten years from now. The time of writing is essential, yet timeless. The events are set in place and time, but universal. We’ll share all that.
The cover of a new journal is influential, too. It is a book, after all. And because the cover is made before the book is begun… it makes me wonder about the relationship between books and covers. Will the cover of this journal influence what goes into it? Sometimes it does.
For that reason, I tend to stock up on the most ordinary composition books to write in, and avoid buying beautiful journals — not that I succeed in avoiding buying them, because gorgeous or otherwise, very fine journals are SO tempting, but then it feels to me like something equally significant or gorgeous should be placed inside. No, instead, you are likely to find a few moments of lovely mooning over a sunset or a scenic river. Aside from that the writing may be no more miraculous than a photo of my take-out meal. The boring covers don’t offer or ask anything of me, so I forget them and write more freely.
But this journal is different. I made this journal, and I made it for you — the same kind of unknown and partly known person who may find an old journal and decipher a passage or two — as if a manuscript abandoned in a cave. (As likely to be a grocery list as good poetry or prose.) It is the finding that makes this journal special. Not because it is less likely to get lost in a cave, being virtual, but because it fills me with a nervous excitement I haven’t felt in some time — the kind of excitement like when I was a kid and found out I should expect a new sister to arrive soon — nervous wondering how this will all turn out, but with an overwhelming feeling that it will be a wonderful journey to meet you.
This journal is like a letter, in a way. It is nice to meet you, I am sure. The beauty of the written word is that we can pick it up and meet any time, like swimming in the same river our grandmother did as a child.
I hope we do share some stories, words, ideas together.
Since it’s my journal, maybe I’ll do all the writing, but expect not. I expect our interactions will affect what goes into these words. They already have. Again the beauty of writing: you are not here now as I type, but you are here now as my voice speaks to you. Isn’t that miraculous? Time is relative, isn’t it?
How exciting! Please, do write back. This is the first time, ever, that I’ve written an interactive journal, and you are part of it. You have your own surface below to write in and send to me. Like Pen Pals. Like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure. Like Time Travel.
Welcome, Christabel
Writer's Block
April 20, 2026
So
I didn’t think to address Writer’s Block so soon, but looking at this journal, I can’t explain away the distance between last entry and this one any other way. And so many of you have asked about it, that I might as well start here.
I have strategies for getting over the block, but in this case, recognizing it is the first step. Procrastination, being busy, and excuses hide that I don’t know what to write next. The problem at hand is not that I have nothing to write, but rather what to write first. Life is too full of stories, every minute one leads into another. But a blank page is a loaded invitation to choose. Choosing it my biggest block.
So why not start with biggest elephant in the room: the blank page itself.
I thought I never had writer’s block, because I have always had something to write—even if it was about having nothing to write, which immediately reveals itself to be the lie I temporarily believe, revealed from the first by how much reflection comes up in its presence. I can hardly write honestly about having writer’s block, can I?
And that’s part of the solution. Strat writing, complain if you must. No one else needs to read that. If you want to share your writing, the beauty is that, unlike spoken conversation, you can take back what you say before anyone sees it. Not all writing is or has to be brilliant. Just write enough that a few brilliant pieces can be extracted. And the more you write, the more you try to find exactly the right word to express a feeling or situation, the more you try to make sure you capture the essence, the truth, or the life of your topic, the easier it gets, the more brilliant phrases will sneak in.
So there you go. Now I’ve broken the barrier, right? Plowed through the blockade. Next entry, I can write something brilliant? No, the pressure to be brilliant eclipses itself. Just write anything.
Unedited. Posted. Shared.
Good morning, Morning!
(starting sentences with “but” and “and” is not recommended practice in formal writing, of course; but this is a journal. So there it is. Thoughts, not elegance.)
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