Jim Harrison, Novelist: Your subconscious mind is trying to help you all the time.

So many journal entries are dead ends but you don’t know until you write them down and think about them.

My main influences in the whole idea of keeping a journal were, oddly, Henry David Thoreau and Tom McGuane. The latter used to keep his on tiny dime store notebooks, which he would toss in a box. The best and most influential journals for me where those of Dostoyevsky, with Flaubert coming in as a close second, also Loren Eisley.

It’s important for a writer not to put too much in a journal for fear of losing the energy and attention that should be left for the work itself. 

Your subconscious mind is trying to help you all the time. That’s why I keep a journal –- not for chatter but for mostly the images that flow into the mind or little ideas.I keep a running journal, and I have all of my life, so it’s like your gold mine when you start writing.
   — Jim Harrison, (novelist, Dalva, Legends Of The Fall). The notes above are from his journal while writing Dalva.