A funny thing happened while I was writing Hearts, Lies & Alibis.
I found myself painting.
I hadn’t decided to take up a new hobby. One of my characters insisted on carrying an art journal. Honey Merrick is a professional artist, and before I could convincingly write about the murals, sketches and paintings she created, I needed to understand them myself. So I began painting them.
As the sketchbook grew, I realized Honey wasn’t the first of my characters to keep a journal.
Heddie’s Doodles are more than Doodles
Heddie Wright, the protagonist of A Mercy of Widows, also fills notebooks. Hers just look very different. Heddie’s pages are crowded with notes, arrows, circles, and dozens of tiny sketches. They aren’t decoration, and they certainly aren’t distractions. They’re a visual filing system. Every image reminds her of a witness, a piece of testimony, a question she can’t answer, or an emotion she’s struggling to understand. As a juror listening to weeks of testimony while carrying grief of her own, her notebook becomes the place where facts, memories, and feelings finally begin to connect.
Honey’s Art Journal
Honey’s journal serves a different purpose.
She’s a visual artist. She processes emotions through colour, composition and visual storytelling. Her sketchbook isn’t about remembering facts; it’s about expressing feelings that are difficult to put into words.
What the Research Says
That made me wonder why journals kept appearing in my novels.
Looking back, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised. I’ve always had a bit of a stationery fetish. Put me in front of a shelf of beautiful notebooks—especially hardbound ones with dotted pages—and my willpower disappears. Over the years I’ve experimented with bullet journals, filled countless notebooks, and even kept separate five-year journals for my personal life and my writing (these days they’ve migrated to digital notebooks).
That fascination eventually led me to the research. Psychologists have studied expressive writing for decades, and there’s growing evidence that writing, sketching, and other forms of creative expression can help people process difficult experiences. Doodling has also been linked to improved attention and memory, while expressive art can offer another way to explore emotions that don’t come easily into words.
I’m not suggesting everyone needs to keep a journal, or that a notebook replaces professional support when it’s needed. But it did make me realize that my characters weren’t keeping journals because I thought it was a clever plot device. They were doing what many real people do as they try to make sense of their lives, one page at a time.
Looking back, I think that’s why journals keep appearing in my stories.
Different Journals. Same Human Need.
Honey paints what she’s feeling. Heddie sketches what she’s thinking. I fill notebooks because ideas seem to behave better once they’re on paper.
Different journals. Different purposes. The same deeply human need to make sense of life.
Curious about expressive journalling?
If you’d like to explore the idea yourself, these books offer different approaches:
- The Doodle Revolution — Sunni Brown
- The Sketchnote Handbook — Mike Rohde
- Scribbles & Doodles: Stress Relieving Doodle Designs — Papeterie Bleu