Journal With Impact: Overview

Workshop: Six Conversations for Writing Creative Journals

“Surely a kind of fascination or a deep desire to learn more about a subject must be there from the start.” Jane Yolen

Whether you have been exploring a journal memoir, or nature, or travel, or family, or vocation, or ongoing reflection, your material has been growing.  If you decide you’d like to begin sharing your thoughts with others one-to-one, or as a blog, or in articles, or books the next steps can become basic outlines and categories to see where your content is overflowing or where it is slim and needs more research or personal involvement.

Think in terms of a preliminary outline to gauge your primary purpose and direction.

What is your story/subject about? Where did it start? Is it an idea to explore, a character memoir, a significant place, or a feeling that sent you on a search?

What is your delivery voice? The delivery voice, like any story, includes the writer’s voice, which must be the consistent voice of your work and worldview. It includes the:

narrator’s personae/personality

attitude  towards the subject

world at large.

What language style will engage a conversation between you and your reader? What words will sing from your story to your readers’ hearts?

And with whom do you most want to share? When you know that the above questions will almost answer themselves.

Hope you continue to enjoy journaling.

Thank you for reading and participating in this year’s blog. In January the new writing blog will be based on my workshop Words That Sing. Below is an excerpt exercise on a language search for when you just need the right one for a particular reason or moment.

And for those of you who would like some small snippets to journal on for a few more weeks, I am posting three blogs based on poems by Langston Hughes as you consider your own dreams for the coming year.

Holiday Blessings and Happy New Year.

Action Steps:

Here’s a brief excerpt from an opening paragraph from an exercise called Quilting in the Ditch, given by James McKean in the book The Practice of Poetry.

“Choose a particular item or activity and make that the object of the language search. Find out as much as possible about the language associated with that object, especially active and concrete verbs, the history of the names used for that object, and terminology that seems especially colorful. Then save from your search a list of nouns, a list of verbs and a list of adjectives.”

I’m focusing on this section only as a variation on the list poem as well as a general search for key metaphoric and rich words. The first run may or may not contain usable words, but by doing so you’ll spark imagination. And/or you may discover just what you needed for a particular sentence or detail.

Here’s an example of one word I searched just on the surface. I didn’t take his next step of research on this. Dividing the nouns, verbs and adjectives gave me sufficient material for my needs at that time.

Word=Compass

Nouns                                                Verbs                                                Adjectives

arc                                                enclose                                    curved

spatial position                        draw                                                navigational

instrument                                    determine                                    indicator

directional device                        pivot                                                magnetic

circular cord                                                                                    ‘moveable rigid legs

hinged at the end’

I ended up with fifteen words to choose from. The next word I choose to search was navigate for which I ended up with thirty-six words.

To my surprise I was actually able to incorporate the moveable rigid legs.

Have some creative exploration.

Share: What surprised you?

Read deep, marcy