Are you alive? Work it out with my January Journal Prompts.
If we haven’t met, I’m Megan. I’m a trained facilitator, respectful writing coach, and award-winning author. Happy New Year, if you’re into that. I’m not doing a New Year’s Resolution, but I am committed to making more time to journal in January. Because I like it. Journaling can be a soul-searching, stress-relieving, honesty-inducing, highly-amusing, quietly revolutionary leisure activity. It can also be a gateway drug to writing. As a creative writer, some of my best pieces have started in the middle of journaling, popping out as shocking new ideas when I had my guard down. Writing in a private journal feels like free, open space where anything can happen.
If you’d like to join me this month, here are my bespoke (and fully megged-up) January Journal Prompts. I suggest giving yourself at least ten minutes or one full page per prompt; whichever comes first; but please, go as long as you like. It’s your page. And don’t worry about making sense or “writing well.” UNLESS those worries bring you tangible animal joy. In which case, keep worrying, I guess! I listen and I don’t judge. Keep scrolling down; have faith; I’ll drop the prompts. But first, here’s my journaling playlist in case you want to set a mood.
January Journal Prompts
Click here for a printable .pdf file of all 31 January journal prompts.
1. What’s my relationship to time?
2. What’s my relationship to unconditional love?
3. Do I have any questions about “right now,” the exact current moment I’m experiencing?
4. What’s going on inside my body today? What’s it up to? What’s it planning?
5. What do I think happens when I want two things at once?
6. Why do I want what I want right now?
7. What am I barely attached to?
8. What’s the nearest beautiful thing?
9. What outfit would I want to wear forever as a ghost, and why? Get specific, think it through.
10. What would I like to be forgiven for?
11. Who do I envy? What can I learn from that? Do I want to do anything about it?
12. What have I accomplished recently? What helped with that?
13. What have I failed at recently? Any guesses as to why?
14. What’s my f*ckin’ problem?
15. Describe, in full contextual detail, any good choice I’ve ever made (recently or in the distant past.) Why did I know to make that choice?
16. What does a fair economy look like? (If answer is unclear, make the best available guess.)
17. What’s strong about my values or character?
18. What’s strong about my body?
19. What in my life am I getting good results on, given the amount of effort I’m putting in?
20. Are ghosts real? Try to argue both sides, yes and no
21. What have I changed my mind about in the last year? What helped me change my mind?
22. Is love real? Try to argue both sides, yes and no.
23. What (if anything) do I expect to continue believing for my whole life, from cradle to deathbed?
24. Who would I like to know better? How might I try to invite or allow that?
25. What brings out my best?
26. How do I actually feel about journaling?
27. Describe a small current problem in detail and see if it’s possible to think through some actual solutions in the next five to ten minutes.
28. What is the right amount of work?
29. How do I approach sleep, as an action and as a concept?
30. What (if anything) am I excited about doing today? This week? This month? This year?
31. How will I make good use of the time ahead of me?
Those are my January journal prompts. I hope you found one (or 31) that you liked enough to try. If you want to get beyond the journal and take your words to the streets, I’m available to give you f*ckin’ friendly, majorly honest sliding-scale creative writing coaching. Get your ideas into the world.
xo, megan
Or just go home to the blog.
These (hopefully) really quite helpful creative writing tips offer what I’ve learned as an award-winning author who writes a million words a year, and what I’ve learned about supporting others as a private writing coach.
There’s no one way to write. There’s only your way. I hope some of my tactics and ideas can help you find it.
Yup, I’m a writing coach.
I work with folks at all levels of experience and all levels of income. My writers range from unhoused teens living on the streets to C-suite executives who want to up-level their communication. If you want a private coaching session but can’t afford it, email megan@howtowritesomething.com and ask for scholarship info.
curious/confused?: what does a writing coach do (and not do)
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