San Francisco Writers' Grotto

To be strictly honest, I purchased this book for the prompts, not for the journal it claims to be. For most topics, the publisher has allowed only a fraction of a page for the book's owner write in, with only a few topics given full reign of an entire page. From previous attempts at keeping a journal, I knew as soon as I looked inside this book that the limited writing space would not suit my style...

As a book with suggested topics on which to write, the 642 Things to Write Journal rates about 4 stars with me. The topics give much food for thought; however, the allowed writing space feels much too cramped, so I deducted one star from the maximum rating for this. I deducted another star from the rating for the size of the book, which feels more like an average novel than a journal to me.

I'd rather have seen all the topics grouped together (no space allowed to write) at the front or back of the book, with non-enumerated and lined pages on which to write grouped together behind or ahead of the topics section, thus removing the space limitation per topic. A few unlined pages could also have been included ahead of or behind the lined pages, to allow the creative spark of those writers who also like to sketch a bit to take root.

642 topics on about 300 pages... a good idea that needed more thought behind it. In the introduction, one of the contributors states that this book was written in a single 24 hour period. Better the group had taken a week to think over how to approach a book like this than to have rushed through it.… (more)