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“You enter the extraordinary by way of the ordinary.” ~Frederick Buechner
Workshop:
Six Conversations for Writing Creative
Journals
“You present
your story in terms of things that can be verified by sensory perception.
Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch—these are the common denominators of human
experience; these are the evidence that men believe.” Dwight V.
Swain
Before
we can interpret our feelings, memories, and emotions to different habitats we
are drawn towards, in the past or present, we often need to explore the
language that nature’s imagery evokes.
Building
a sensory vocabulary helps us to understand and share our experiences with
depth to both interpret and enhance emotional connections. One of my favorite
and engaging applications came from a workshop I took with author Ethel Herr.
She pointed out that any observation is incomplete unless we can track the
emotional reaction—both in one-to-one contact and with fictional characters.
We
need to develop the essential specific word choices: salty-sour-sweet-bitter.
If it smells bad is it like a: rotten egg, a sewer, or a low tide? And we also
need to recognize that what smells bad to one person may actually be sweet to
another. I discovered that one day when driving with an elderly friend. I smelt
something noxious and worried it was my car. I asked if she could smell it and
her reply was “isn’t it lovely?” Apparently we were smelling sulfur, which to
her reminded her of where she grew up near sulfur springs. She happily inhaled
while I attempted not to choke.
To
develop and expand a wider vocabulary Ethel Herr suggested choosing a different sense per day and
paying close attention to just it. So on Monday notice everything you smell. On
Tuesday touch, Wednesday taste, Thursday hear, and Friday see.
Then next
to each word on each list expand the possibilities. Again, did something smell
rotten? Was it rotten like decaying compost, a humid hiking trail, or a dead
fish? What distinguishes each ‘rotten’ smell? Repeat the process for any words
that you want more depth to.
Action
Steps:
1. Take the
habitat and memory you chose last week and apply Ethel Herr’s exercise to your
details. Choose one sense per day and daydream that moment.
2. What detail
surprised you? What made you laugh or cry?
3. What word best
represents your language example?
Share: What two
favorite sensory images did you remember?
Read deep, marcy
Workshop:
Six Conversations for Writing Creative
Journals
“The act of
recording a life, in healthy solitude and active connection to a loved terrain,
is also the act of creating a life.” Hannah Hinchman
Nature
Journals—Language
Art,
music, and imagery can become a separate language of communication. So too does
nature. It is a language that speaks to us, by personally touching our hearts
and souls with meaning, and also by allowing us to share across time and
culture with others. Nature as reflection builds a bridge of communication that
gives us soul-to-soul threads of understanding.
Their
images provide illustrations to our past and our present with strangers and
friends, as we paint words with pictures and sensory description through
writing, or share our images silently in drawings and photographs.
Here
are a few examples.
In
her book, This Same Sky, Naomi Shihab
Nye shares poems from around the world; this excerpt is by Kwang-kyu Kim in
South Korea, translation by Brother Anthony.
The
Land of Mists
“In the land of mists
always shrouded in mist
nothing ever happens
And if something happens
nothing can be seen
because of the mist
for if you live in mist
you get accustomed to mist
so you don’t try to see
Therefore in the land of mists
you should not try to see
you have to hear things
for if you don’t hear you can’t live
so ears keep on growing
People like rabbits
with ears of white mist
Iive in the land of mists.”
As
a child I spent many summers visiting my aunt at a lake in northern Ontario,
Canada. At least once or twice each summer we would get a raging storm over the
lake unlike anything I would ever experience in the city. There were no hard
copy photographs for me to look at when I grew older, but as I re-saw the
storms in my memory I was able to see it again and capture it for myself in a
poem.
The Storm,
by marcy weydemuller
Gloom black sky,
thick hard rain,
the lake invisible.
Until lightning
ripped above.
Then we could see
bending trees,
churning waves
wrestled the storm.
Awestruck, we
returned to dark
again.
Action
Steps:
1. What images or emotions do you identify
with in either of these nature snapshots? What memories do they bring up from
your own experience in a particular setting? Write that scene up in your
journal.
2. Then write, “today I wish I could go to
the woods, meadow, ocean, forest, lake, mountain or…
because…….. .”
Share:
Why does that habitat of nature appeal to you the most?
Read deep, marcy
Workshop:
Six Conversations for Writing Creative
Journals
“Location pertains to feeling; feeling
profoundly pertains to place; place in history partakes of feeling, as feeling
about history partakes of place.” Eudora
Welty
Brainstorm Fiction
Prompts Part Two
List: Make a
list. Set timer if you want. Minimum two minutes, but I suggest five.
Exercise
three:
List ten to twenty cities you have visited that you absolutely loved, or would
love to visit again if you had the chance. (Can also repeat for hated too.)
Go
back through the list and next to each city write one word that captures that
city’s memory for you—why you love it. Architecture, food, felt free, fell in
love, etc.
Scratch
List:
Make a few categories and combine common factors under each.
Exercise
four:
Look at your city list so far and see if there are any common factors. Separate
accordingly. Does one category contain many and another a few? Why? Make a note
of what makes two favorite cites land in different categories.
Share: How many
creative breaks were you able to add into your week?
Questions: Who, what,
when, where, why, and how.
Exercise
five: Go
back to your free-write and apply these questions to the character of the city.
View it as a person. What do you know—what don’t you know? Make a list for
further research on missing parts.
Letter: Write a
short letter either from your character or to your character.
Exercise six: Choose the
city you loved the most from the earlier list and have your character write to
a person in that city, or again receive a letter from a friend visiting that
city. Or make it impersonal as if a business assignment.
Action
Steps: Application
Writing
Assignment:
Choose
a few details from each of all your exercises, from Part One and Part Two,
mixing and matching theme, setting, and memory. Now write up a short episode as
a brief memory for your character. It can be either from the POV of this was
once her home, or as a visit to a strange place.
Your
city now has descriptive footprints with a personal emotional connection that
relates to your travel journey. Now share your our own story in your own voice.
Share: Which
brainstorm techniques worked best for you? Which were the most difficult? Why?
Read deep, marcy
Workshop:
Six Conversations for Writing Creative
Journals
“Writing
fiction set in actual locations, either contemporary or historical, is both
restricting and inspiring. Restricting in that we’re bound by reality, but
inspiring since reality often provides story or character ideas. “ Sarah
Sundin
Brainstorm Fiction
Prompts Part One
Using
fiction techniques as a brainstorm,
to share your story and your travel world, often reminds us of missing details
or unexpected gems. Here are six exercises that are focused on city settings as
an example. Or you can substitute the city for any other aspect of your travel
focus. Also consider turning yourself, or one of your travel companions, into a
fictional character while doing these prompts to see what emotional connections
might rise to the surface.
The
reality of our world, its emotional resonance, and unique atmosphere, will be
found in the details. Either we see it though the familiarity and ordinariness
of our main character, or we see its strangeness through her confusion or
entrancement. So it’s important for us to know the details ourselves. Just as
we can walk around our homes in the dark, knowing exactly where we are, so must
our characters. What is real to them needs to be real to us. This provides
authentic atmosphere, tone, and mood. We don’t need to invent everything, but
we do need to learn to develop an instinct to connect details with emotions
effectively.
Where
to start? Right here—exactly where your character is now.
Action
Steps:
Free-write: Set a
timer so you’re not clock watching. Write without
stopping for eight to ten minutes. If you can’t think of the next
word—repeat the last word until something else comes to mind, even if it’s
random. Write thoughts—words—sentences—whatever comes out. Ignore spelling and
punctuation. Don’t lift the pen from the page!
Exercise One. Choose the
room your character wakes up in. Start from her first moments of consciousness
and go. Is it a familiar bed or not? Sheets—yes or no—clean or dirty—silk or
cotton or straw or an unknown substance?
Exercise One, Part Two.
Choose a city that will be in your world, real or imaginary, regardless of
whether one of your characters will ever go there. It can be a myth, a
historical place, or current to your character. Free-write everything you think
you know about this city, or you think it will be about.
Did
any detail surprise you?
Cluster: Take a
word and place it in the middle of a page and then make spokes out to bubbles
from it with word associates. For each of the words you choose, repeat the
process. Go out as far you can.
Exercise Two: Choose a
word or a thought, either for theme, or potential research, from your
free-write and cluster out all the ideas as far as you can.
Share: How far
did you get? Which brainstorm of the two generated the most material for you?
Part Two brainstorm on Saturday
Read deep, marcy
Workshop:
Six Conversations for Writing Creative
Journals
“What
we see less of and what we need more of these days is travel journalism, people
in a new place deliberately seeking out stories of interest and of import.”
James Durston
Preparation for Planned Trip
(Also
works for organizing material re memoir locations only going backwards into
memory.)
Carve
out your niche.
Read
ahead with travel books. Particularly notice what is missing. What do you want
to read information on that’s not there? Study maps. Look at online photos. If
possible read some local newspapers or journalists who blog for that region to
get a flavor for the community. Begin to focus on your destination from the
inside out instead of as an observer to get a deeper insight.
Don’t
just describe, Durston says. “Give me its stories, reveal its spirit, cut open
its gut.” Look for the connective details that will influence your curiosity
and search.
Consider
a simple diary outline that matches your personal goals to briefly fill in key
words as a reminder to keep the days from blending together when they might
overlap. For example: places to eat, specific locations, bits of history, the
unexpected, music heard, a conversation.
Decide
how while on location you will keep mementos of each day’s outing such as
ticket stubs, or menus, any free giveaways. If you take several photographs,
will each day’s content go into its own folder or another category? Later when
you review, you will be reminded of which day the weather changed, or you might
notice repeating themes through each day.
Prepare
for the active logistics: currency, timetables for transportation, safety
measures, phone numbers in case of emergency, basic language translations for
any country you visit. And although the new tech apps now available are compact
and helpful, keep a paper copy as well—both for yourself and another copy for
someone at your home base in case of loss.
Action
Steps:
1. Return now to your dream journey questions
and let them become your foundation for organizing your logistics and itinerary.
2. Pare all the common details down to the
simplest format so that it will be as ordinary as a daily commute for you.
3. Choose how to copy or send your daily
adventures into a backup file while traveling.
Share: What
preparation had you not considered before your research but will include on
your trip?
Or
what specific advice has been helpful to you on one of your previous journeys?
Read deep, marcy
Workshop:
Six Conversations for Writing Creative
Journals
“Good travel writing is always in demand.” Diana Tonnessen
Your
presentation will depend on your audience, your purpose, and your focus. If you
have decided to try out the travel magazine markets, then you will need to
study their style as to whether to develop essays or articles, and a specific
voice. If you are developing chapters for your own personal memoir then an
essay or a story vignette might be a better fit. Or perhaps as a memoir, or a
mini adventure to family members only, a series of letters might be more
appropriate.
Magazine editor Tonnessen recommends, “Tell me something I don’t know.
Take me with you when you go. Tell me a story I
can’t put down.” That advice applies whether your audience is private or
public.
And
if you are a fiction writer, your research on locations and settings can do
double duty as an article for a magazine, or an essay for your blog, as you
build your reading audience.
Go over the above suggestions and categories and note which style you
prefer to read yourself. That will most likely be the style you are most
comfortable writing.
Walk through the different styles of travel books or
magazines you enjoy and outline a few articles that appeal to you and see how
they were set up. What stood out? How might your content be adapted to that format?
How can you give it a personal voice?
All articles will have an opening hook, but have a
variety of methods, and will give a focus indication of the main area
of interest: museum, seaport, bookstores, restaurants, landmarks to name a few.
Usually there are three to five paragraphs to explore the subject and then a
closing summary that returns to the opening lead.
It sounds very much like the sharing we automatically
do with friends and family when we are excited about a trip we’ve just taken,
or a new restaurant we tried out, or a wonderful family day with young
children, or teen children, or as a couple.
Action
Steps:
1.
Take one specific episode of your trip and write it up three ways: as a letter,
as an essay, and as an article with each answering Tonnessen’s requested
details.
Share: Which style
did you write most naturally? Were you surprised?
Read deep, marcy
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