my question is this the corret/prefered way to do this?

A basic example of logging to a file:

 package require logger
 proc log_to_file {lvl txt} {
   set logfile "mylog.log"
   set msg "\[[clock format [clock seconds]]\] $txt"
   set f [open $logfile {WRONLY CREAT APPEND}] ;# instead of "a"
   fconfigure $f -encoding utf-8
   puts $f $msg
   close $f
 }

 set log [logger::init global]
 foreach lvl [logger::levels] {
   interp alias {} log_to_file_$lvl {} log_to_file $lvl
   ${log}::logproc $lvl log_to_file_$lvl
 }

 ${log}::info "Logging to a file"

thanks,