Dear Diary . . .

If you find yourself frustrated by the lack of refinement in your adolescent diaries, then commit yourself to writing a constructive body of work in the present. Journaling is a form of literature, says Gregory Robison, executive director of the Writer's Center in Bethesda. Robison teaches a class on the art of journal writing, called "Life Sentences," at the center ( http://www.writer.org). Below, he and Ellen K. Baker, a psychologist with a practice in the District, offer advice for getting the most out of your journal.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

1. Be mindful and think before you write. Use your senses and imagination. Express not just what happened but how it feels. Be descriptive.

2. Take risks and be honest. Journaling is private, so allow yourself full disclosure. Unlike fiction writing or writing for publication, journaling never involves drafts or self-censorship. "Most of the time we'll only write what we're able to read, so we'll only be as truthful as we can bear," Baker says. "But there is often a relief in getting something out, because then we have choices. The journal is kind of a warm-up place to giving voice to thoughts and feelings that then can be talked about out loud."

3. Write with some frequency, and don't throw out your journal. Constantly return to the work. If you lapse for a period of time, don't try to go back and fill in all the missed dates. Simply take up the routine again and keep it going, and never get rid of a journal. "Often people toss it for fear of being found, but keeping it is a validation that our selves really can't be disposed of," Baker says.

4 Be concerned with dates. Either implicitly or literally, assign some date or marker to each entry. "The idea is that you're doing this to end up with a body of literature starting at the beginning," Robison says. "Your journal has a beginning and passes through time."

5. Compose individual, independent entries of any length in any style on any topic."It's like an essay, but it's an essay where the transitions don't have to work," Robison says. A journal need not be solely prose; an entry can consist of an illustration or an inserted object (such as a ticket stub or a newspaper clipping or, if you want to get melodramatic, a dried-up rose petal from a boutonniere).

6. Exercise your own authorial voice. "A journal should be an uninhibited expression of the author's point of view, to the exclusion of any apparent audience or purpose other than personal expression," Robison says.

-- D.Z.