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Keri Smith’s idea for Wreck This Journal began with a familiar creative block: she found it hard to keep a journal when she worried about making mistakes or making the pages look right. Her answer was to make the journal a place for experimentation, where mess and unexpected marks are part of the activity rather than flaws to correct.
What inspired Keri Smith to create Wreck This Journal?
In a 2007 interview with Make:, Smith explained that the book grew out of her own journaling. Concern about mistakes and appearances had made it difficult for her to keep a journal. She became more consistent when she treated it as a space to experiment instead of a finished object that had to look polished.
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That shift became the book’s premise: prompts invite readers to interact with a journal in unconventional ways, use what is nearby and let go of some control. In a publisher interview reproduced in a Penguin Random House educator packet, Smith likewise described making the journal for herself after questioning her perfectionist habits.
What is Wreck This Journal about?
It is an activity book that turns the journal page into a low-stakes place to try things, rather than a surface reserved for careful writing or attractive art. Smith’s prompts encourage readers to make a mess, test ideas and accept results that may not be neat or predictable.
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- Penguin Wreck This Journal Now In Color Book- A spectacular coloring and painting edition of The Wreck This Journal series.
- Muster up your best mistake- and mess-making abilities to fill the pages of the book, or destroy them.
As Smith put it in the Make: interview: “What if the purpose was not to make something beautiful, but in fact do the opposite. Make a mess. Try something different. Screw it up.” The point is not that every page must be ruined in the same way; it is that a page can be used without the pressure to produce something beautiful.
Do you need art supplies to follow the prompts?
No special materials are presented as a requirement. Smith’s advice is to work with what is available: “Use whatever you have around you at any given time, not concerning yourself with having the right materials or supplies. all of that is irrelevant.” Everyday objects and surroundings can become starting points, so the activity is about trying and noticing, not assembling an ideal art kit.
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What does Keri Smith say about creativity and everyday life?
Smith’s approach treats attention as creative material. A walk, an ordinary object or something encountered in daily life can prompt a new idea when you look at it differently. A 2008 interview with Cecil Vortex also discusses her interest in creative books and paying attention to everyday surroundings.
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One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchIn the educator packet, Smith offers the short advice “Do something else.” It is a practical response to feeling stuck: change the activity rather than forcing an idea to arrive on command. The packet also reproduces a line by Annie Proulx, quoted by Smith, about walking encouraging “exploration of odd possibilities and improbable connections.” The sentence is Proulx’s, as quoted by Smith, not Smith’s original wording.
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Can the journal be a shared creative activity?
Smith said she was surprised when readers began sharing pages and groups used the book as a challenge. That account suggests how a private experiment can become a conversation: people can compare what they tried without needing identical results. It is a reported response from Smith, not a measure of how widely or effectively readers use the book.
What other activity books by Keri Smith explore similar ideas?
In publisher material for The Pocket Scavenger, Smith describes a related activity: searching for ordinary found objects and altering them. It carries the same broad invitation to treat what is already around you as material for creative play, but it is a separate activity from the journal. The publisher’s guide to The Pocket Scavenger provides that description.
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Where to find the interview and book information
The Make: interview was published June 4, 2007, by nataliezdrieu, whom the article identifies as CRAFT’s Editor-in-Chief. It is a historical conversation, so details about Smith’s location, projects or circumstances in that interview should be read in their 2007 context—not as a current biography.
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The Penguin Random House educator packet identifies Wreck This Journal with ISBN 978-0-399-16194-0. Check the publisher or bookseller for the edition and availability relevant to your location; the interview and packet do not establish current inventory.
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