A Lightning-Fast Guide to Writing & Keeping a Travel Journal

Traveling is hands down one of the most exciting and fulfilling experiences you can ever take on yourself. You get the unique opportunity to explore new cultures, visit different lands, meet new people, and expand your comfort zones in ways you could never imagine.

However, with so much going on daily, it can be hard to keep up, hard to not feel overwhelmed, and most importantly, hard to remember everything! This is why keeping a travel journal is so highly recommended! If you’re not sure on how or where to get started; here’s a fast guide with everything you need to know.

Get a Writing Space

The great thing about keeping a travel journal is that it’s personal and you can write or structure it however you want. It’s your private space for your thoughts that you can call your own. You can do this in whatever format you want, whether that’s on your phone or your computer.

You could even have a public journal if you really want and turn it into a travel blog. However, having a dedicated journal just for traveling and writing by hand is an experience in itself.

Grab yourself a journal or notebook that feels special to you. Or, fire up your favorite computer program to document your days.

Use Your Journal to Stay Organized

It doesn’t matter how long you’re planning on traveling or how spontaneous you want your adventure to be, it’s always a good idea to have a bit of organization. This includes writing down the places you really want to visit, the activities, and the special sights you want to see.

“Having a journal is highly practical in this way because you’ll be able to record everything in one place, so you don’t misplace anything, and can help to keep track of everything you’re doing!” explains Sarah Grey, a travel writer for Paper Fellows.

A Visual Memory Bank

It’s a great idea to form the habit of writing in your journal every single day because this way you’ll find it much easier to keep writing. By writing daily, you won’t struggle to remember everything you did that day. This way, you’ll be able to write down far more details of your experiences, so when you look back in years to come, you’ll be able to remember it like you were there! The more details, the better!

Discover Yourself

When you’re out in the world you have the opportunity to expand your comfort zone and grow as a person.

During your travels, you’re going to change so much as a person, so don’t be afraid to write about yourself. Give yourself a chance to self-reflect and learn about how you’re changing and growing as an individual.

Use Online Tools to Help

Your travel journal is your travel journal, and there are no hard or fast rules about how you should write it. You can write long essays about your day’s activities, or you can just bullet point key bits and pieces, it’s completely up to you.

However, if you’re looking for some tips, advice, and help on how to find and improve your own writing styles; here are some online tools that can help;

- Via Writing / Writing Populist: Use these two websites as a way to improve your use of grammar.

- Academized / UKWritings: You can use these two online proofreading tools to help highlight and correct errors in your journal entries, as reviewed by BestBritishEssays.

- State of Writing / Simple Grad: These are two online blogs full of useful tips and advice on how to improve your writing skills.

- Essayroo / Boomessays: Use these online services as editing tools to help learn to structure and format your journal entries easily, as recommended by Essayroo.com review.

- My Writing Way / Let’s Go and Learn: These two websites are full of writing guides on how to improve all areas of your writing skills.

Stay in Touch

During your travels, you’re bound to meet new and exciting people from all over the world, many of which you might want to keep in touch with. While social media exists to make this easier, there’s something about writing someone’s name, number and possibly even address for staying in touch.

This makes it easier to associate particular people with memories of your trips.

Grab a notebook, journal, or writing program to start documenting your next trip!

Grace Carter is a travel editor at Book Report Writing and Big Assignments services. She works with a team of proofreaders and remote writers. Also, Grace teaches creative and business writing at OX Essays website.