Wild and Woolly: A Journal Keeper's Handbook
by Alfred DePew
Dog Star Press, 2004, 130 Pages

It almost seems like a conflict of interest for me to write a review of a book on journaling. White Crane is a reader-written journal, so we have a particular interest in people who keep a daily, or weekly, or even a from-time-to-time, record of their lives. It's our bread and butter.

In the past few years a good deal of attention has been paid to this particular form of self-reflection, most notably with Julia Cameron's impressive "The Artist's Way" and all the ancillary and support books and materials that came from her work.

Alfred DePew joins the collection of guides on how-to-journal with Wild and Woolly: A Journal Keeper's Handbook which I found particularly appealing and well written and even recommended by Julia Cameron herself.

DePew's easy-to-handle, easy-to-read book gives guidance to both the first time journaler and the veteran journal keeper, offering techniques and exercises that explore a diverse range of pathways into the personal journey. Individual chapters on Dreamwork, Drawing, Dialogues, Lists, Maps and Mandalas, and my favorite, Unsent Letters (there being a number of letters sent in my life that might have remained more wisely unsent!)

As an editor of this journal, I am most drawn to DePew's advice to the prospective journaler to "Lighten up. Be willing to be surprised"…and then his suggestion that if one chapter doesn't seem to be working for you to skip to another. His "Take what you can use" advice is particularly good, I think and could easily serve as the sub-sub-title for White Crane journal itself.

Journaling is a form of meditation and like meditation is best practiced on a regular basis. Discipline is one of the most salient virtues associated with both journaling and spiritual work and DePew goes on to offer the nowadays rare advice that he's not sure where we all got the idea that everything is supposed to be easy and instant. Probably television is as much to blame as anything, and a culture that seems intent on extolling the pleasures of instant gratification.

I approach my own journaling with a lackadaisical, yet still devoted method. In my own life I have found some of my best "me times" have been when I have set out on what I have called "a gestalt meander" taking a walk with no particular objective or goal in mind, and just taking in with all of my senses the world around me. I have always thought of it as a "date with myself."

It's a short step from there to the written page and DePew's book offers numerous doorways into taking that next step. His best advice is to enjoy it and not turn it into a chore. This means you may not actually sit and write every day, but still manage to keep that date with yourself.

Readers seeking a way into their own spiritual health will find journaling to be a rewarding, if slow and painstaking process. Wild and Woolly outlines the process succinctly and DePew has provided an excellent guide for feeling one's way and recording your own story.