80 Journaling Prompts for Memory, Family, Work and Everyday Life

Journaling prompts are short questions or instructions that give you something specific to write about when a blank page offers nothing. The 80 original prompts below are grouped into ten themes, from childhood to the years ahead. Pick one, write for ten minutes, and keep what you wrote: over time the entries become a record of a life.

How to use journaling prompts

The words diary and journal share a Latin root in dies, "day." A diary usually aims at daily, dated entries; a journal can be less regular. Either works here. A few habits make prompts more useful:

• Choose one prompt, not five. Depth beats coverage.
• Set a timer. Ten minutes is enough to get past the first obvious sentences.
• Date every entry and note where you are writing.
• Start with something you can see, hear or smell. Details bring back more details.
• Do not edit as you go. Spelling and order can wait.
• Skip any prompt you do not want to answer. Come back to it another year, or never.
• Repeat a prompt. The same question answered five years apart gives two different entries.

Joan Didion's 1966 essay "On Keeping a Notebook," collected in Slouching Towards Bethlehem, is a good companion read on the habit.

Prompts about where you come from

Memory and childhood

1. Describe the kitchen of your childhood home, starting with its smell.
2. What is your earliest memory? Write only what you can actually picture.
3. What game did you play for hours, and who made the rules?
4. Write about a toy, book or blanket you refused to give up.
5. What were you afraid of at seven, and what ended the fear?
6. Describe the trip to school, landmark by landmark.
7. What did summer sound like where you grew up?
8. Which childhood rule did you break, and were you caught?

Family

1. Describe a family dinner: who sat where, and who talked most?
2. What saying did a parent or grandparent repeat until it stuck?
3. Write about a holiday that went wrong and became a favorite story.
4. Which chore was yours alone?
5. Which relative do people say you resemble? Do you agree?
6. What recipe would you save if you could save only one?
7. Write about an object that has passed through three generations.
8. Which family story do you suspect has been improved over the years?

People who shaped you

1. Which teacher changed how you saw yourself, and with what words?
2. Describe your first best friend and the day you met.
3. Who taught you to drive, cook, swim or fix something?
4. Write about a neighbor you still think about.
5. Whose handwriting would you know anywhere? Describe it.
6. Who believed in you before you had earned it?
7. Write a thank-you note you never sent.
8. Which stranger did you meet once and never forget?

Places

1. Describe a room you can no longer enter.
2. Where did you go to be alone as a teenager?
3. Write about the first home that was truly yours.
4. Which street would you show a visitor first, and why?
5. Describe a view from a window you looked through every day.
6. Where were you happiest for one ordinary afternoon?
7. What store, diner or library was the center of your neighborhood?
8. Write about a place that has changed so much you felt lost in it.

Prompts about work and change

Work

1. Describe your first paid job and your first boss.
2. What did you buy with your first paycheck?
3. Write about a terrible day at work that you can laugh about now.
4. What skill did you learn on the job that no school taught?
5. Which coworker made the hours go faster?
6. Describe the tools of your trade and how they felt in your hands.
7. What work are you proudest of that nobody noticed?
8. Write about the day you left a job, by choice or not.

Turning points

1. What decision split your life into before and after?
2. Write about a door that closed and what you did the next morning.
3. When did you first feel like an adult?
4. Describe a move: what you packed last and unpacked first.
5. What advice did you ignore, and how did that turn out?
6. Write about a lucky accident that changed your direction.
7. When did you change your mind about something important?
8. What risk are you glad you took?

Prompts for good times and hard ones

Gratitude

1. List five small things that made this week easier.
2. Who showed up for you without being asked?
3. What part of your daily routine would you miss most?
4. Write about a gift that cost little and meant a great deal.
5. What everyday ability do you take for granted?
6. Describe a meal you remember with thanks.
7. What did someone forgive you for?
8. Which ordinary day would you gladly live again?

Hard times

1. Write about a loss, beginning with the day before it happened.
2. What got you through a hard winter, real or figurative?
3. Describe a time money was tight and how the household managed.
4. What did a failure teach you that success could not?
5. Write about a goodbye you were not ready for.
6. Who or what did you lean on when plans fell apart?
7. What would you say now to yourself in that difficult year?
8. Write about something you have not yet made peace with.

Prompts about now and next

The present day

1. Describe this morning in detail, from waking until noon.
2. What is on your kitchen table or desk right now?
3. Who did you talk to today, and what was left unsaid?
4. What are you reading, watching or listening to this month?
5. Describe the view from where you are sitting.
6. What is on your mind today, and which part can you act on?
7. Write down a conversation you overheard this week.
8. What does an ordinary Tuesday look like for you now?

Looking ahead

1. What do you want to learn in the next year?
2. Describe the home you hope to live in ten years from now.
3. What story do you hope people will tell about you?
4. Write a letter to be opened in five years.
5. What are you ready to stop doing?
6. Which relationship deserves more of your time?
7. What place do you still want to see, and why that one?
8. What would you like to be remembered for?

Turning journal entries into memoir

A journal is usually written for yourself, not for publication, but it can supply the material for a memoir or an autobiography. A memoir is a true narrative built from the author's memories, and it normally covers one period or thread of a life instead of the whole of it. That makes a stack of dated entries a very good place to start.

1. Let entries rest. Reread after a month and mark the ones that still hold your attention.
2. Look for what repeats. A person, a place or a worry that keeps returning is a likely subject.
3. Expand one entry into a scene. Add who was there, what was said and what the room looked like.
4. Add the view from today. A journal records what happened; a memoir also says what you make of it now.
5. Check what you can. Compare your memory with photographs, letters and relatives' accounts, and say so where versions differ.
6. Arrange by theme. Group scenes around one thread, such as a job, a house or a relationship.

Our step-by-step guide on how to write a memoir picks up from here. If a full memoir feels too large, try compressing one entry into a six-word memoir first.