Direct answer
Objectives follow journal display order. Some depend on your choices; follow the active objective in the game.
Result
Whenever I would ask the witcher for his opinion concerning my latest sonnet, elegy or even couplet, he'd always claim he hadn't the time. Yet time he had aplenty when it came to reading letters found on corpses or lying about monster nests. Perhaps that was because they, unlike my writings, often proved the path to significant riches...
