There’s no single way to keep a creative journal—but if you’re trying to sustain an artistic life across the cycles of making, pausing, researching, and recovering, having a dedicated space for your thinking is just as important as one for your doing.
This isn’t a diary. It’s not an academic sketchbook or a formal portfolio. It’s a living notebook that helps you stay in conversation with your ideas, your questions, your body, and your field. It’s part *bullet journal, part *Artist’s Way morning pages, and part *GTD (Getting Things Done) system for capturing and releasing mental clutter.
Here’s how to start your own creative practice notebook—and how to keep it alive.
1. Choose Your Form
- Digital or analog?
- Bound or looseleaf?
- Private or semi-public?
What matters is that you choose a form that feels good in your hand and is easy to carry or open when the ideas arrive. A Google Doc is fine. So is a pocket sketchbook. The notebook should invite you in.
2. Use Sections (But Don’t Be Precious)
Think of your notebook as a modular toolkit. You don’t need to write in order. You can create tabs, color code, or just trust your memory. But these five core sections, adapted from our Performance Studio course at Sarah Lawrence, offer a simple structure:
- Studio Log: Track your creative sessions. What did you do? What felt stuck or surprising? What’s emerging?
- Inspiration & Archive: Quotes, images, books, articles, overheard conversations. Include URLs, names, fragments, and references.
- Scores, Lists & Prompts: Exercises you invent, movement scores, writing prompts, and to-do lists that are more than errands.
- Project Notes: Ideas, brainstorms, feedback, drafts, and sketches for active or future projects.
- Questions: Ongoing inquiries—artistic, political, personal. What are you wrestling with? What are you avoiding?
You can use bullets (like Ryder Carroll’s Bullet Journal Method) or freewrite. You can draw diagrams, collage, and annotate. Your notebook should be structured enough to return to, but loose enough to evolve.
3. Log Inputs as Well as Outputs
Many artists only write when they’re producing. But you’re continually receiving.
Make space for documenting:
- What you’re reading and why.
- What performances you’ve seen and what lingered.
- What conversations are shaping your thought.
This helps shift your notebook from a mirror to a conversation partner.
4. Build a Practice Around the Notebook
Like your studio, your notebook thrives with routine. You don’t need to write every day, but try:
- A weekly check-in: What did I make? What am I thinking about?
- A monthly review: What patterns are emerging? What’s shifting?
- A seasonal reset: What do I want to carry forward? What can I let go?
Link your journaling to your cycles of making. Let the notebook become a container for your creative capacity, like the “bucket” described in Thinking in Systems: what fills you, what drains you, and what needs replenishing.
5. Let It Be a Site of Care
Sometimes your journal will be full of lists. Sometimes, it will be poetry.
Sometimes it’ll just be the truth: I’m tired. I need rest. That’s part of the practice too.
This notebook isn’t about productivity. It’s about attention.
To your materials. To your process. To yourself.
A creative practice notebook is more than a container for thoughts—it’s a space where you can be in conversation with your process, not just your product. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be yours. Whether it lives on a legal pad, in a leather-bound journal, or across scattered voice memos and Google Docs, what matters is that it holds what you’re noticing, what you’re making, and how you’re making sense of it.
Some days it will feel generative. Other days it will be a place to put down the weight. But over time, this notebook becomes your companion. It traces your rhythms. It catches the fragments. It reminds you that practice isn’t a straight line—it’s a spiral, a loop, a constellation of returns.
So give yourself permission to write badly. To jot half-thoughts. To sketch without meaning. To rest the pen mid-sentence. Your notebook will hold it all. And if you stay in relationship with it, it might just have you too.
Recommended Journals for Your Practice
Finding the right notebook is personal. It should feel like an invitation, not a chore. Here are three I recommend, depending on your budget and style:
- Nuuna Notebooks — For the design-obsessed artist. Thick paper, lay-flat binding, bold graphics. These feel like objects of desire. Shop Nuuna on Amazon
- LEUCHTTURM1917 — A classic for bullet journaling and daily practice. Numbered pages, index, and a solid reputation for durability. Shop LEUCHTTURM1917 on Amazon
- PAPERAGE Notebooks — Budget-friendly, minimal, and surprisingly good paper quality. If you want a low-stakes place to start, this is it. Shop PAPERAGE on Amazon
*These are affiliate links. If you click and purchase, Contemporary Performance may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. It helps support the site and keeps these resources free.
Future Productivity Posts in the Series
- Create/Reorganize Your Artist/Company Website
- Create/Update Your Artist Statement
- How to Set Up a Creative Practice Notebook (That You’ll Actually Use)
- CV Maintenance: The Key to Being Ready for Opportunities
- 5 Things to Consider When Running an Artist’s Email List
- 5 Steps to Building and Maintaining a Contemporary Performing Artist’s Social Media
- 10 Secrets To Getting Your Work Noticed, Attended, Presented, and Toured
