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In the last thirty years, and with particular vigor in the last ten years, a new genre of self-help literature has emerged: the self-help journaling guide. In this article, I analyze publication records to track the emergence of this genre and then analyze the content of a representative group of such texts. The analysis shows that writing, as presented in self-help journaling guides, is a tool not only for doing work in the world (as traditional school- or business-informed models of writing might be) but also a tool for inner work. Specifically, it is construed as a tool for discovering a true or authentic self, a tool for self-construction, and a tool for "dialogue with the self." That journaling works toward serious aims, touching on centers of identity and selfhood (rather than toward aesthetic or leisure purposes as arts and crafts might), is further reflected in the books' presentation of journal writing as risky or daring or as a kind of meditative or spiritual practice.
I have kept a journal, with varying degrees of consistency and satisfaction, since I was a young girl. I have often been given diaries and blank books as gifts by my parents, grandparents, and friends on special occasions and holidays, and one particularly embarrassing example has even survived since I was in the eighth grade. My father, too, has kept a journal from time to time, and a few Christmases ago we dug together through an old trunk of family papers, unearthing diaries written by my grandmother and great-grandmother. The idea of journal-writing is nothing new in my family or in the world, then, and my personal writing is very similar to that in which literate human beings have engaged over a long history.
However, my own journaling practice includes an artifact that my predecessors are very unlikely to have used: a book that includes questions and exercises to stimulate reflection and expression in writing about my daily life and values. Found in the self-help section of the bookstore a year or so ago, its cover says it is "designed to assist in the process of self-discovery" (Huber & Shiver, 1988). Journals themselves have been in use for a long time, yet books like this one are new....