Keeping a journal is actually a great idea, and I should do it. A big part of the problem for me is fear of making mistakes, but unless you let yourself make mistakes, you don't learn.

I think I'm fairly solid on verb forms, though French doesn't actually have that many (imperfect past, future, conditional, subjunctive... plus a couple that are formed with auxiliary verbs, but those are really easy, and a historic past tense that's only used in books). My only exposure to Italian is through opera, and between that and French cognates I can recognize a decent number of words, but I've never studied it. I love the sound of it, though!