C) Telling Your Stories

Into the Fire: What Happened Was…

October 24, 2011

This weekend I attended The Sun magazine’s annual writers’ workshop, “Into the Fire” at Esalen in Big Sur. Having been to one of these workshops four years ago, I anticipated the weekend as eagerly as a child anticipates an Oreo cookie–imagining twisting it apart, licking out the luscious filling, then biting into the crisp chocolate [...]

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A Week’s Worth of Journaling Prompts: Reflections for the Future

September 19, 2011

I have just been reading Writer Magazine’s June 2011 interview of Gail Godwin, regarding her recently released The Making of a Writer, Volume 2: Journals, 1963-1969. Godwin’s purpose in publishing her edited journal entries is to inspire other writers by sharing her journey and growth as a writer, as well as how she mines her [...]

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A Week’s Worth of Journaling Prompts: Using Your Journal for Memoir

September 12, 2011

Journal writing is good for so many things: emotional catharsis, sorting out problems, recording life events, self-reflection, and personal growth. It is also a writer’s tool, in which we write about our characters, explore possibilities, and practice writing dialog. Often, though, we don’t make use of previous entries. We mull over things in writing, and [...]

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Making Meaning Through Journal Writing: Our Shared Humanity

March 16, 2011

THIS week’s journaling prompts help us explore our responses to painful world events, as well as how we could, can, and do help others. The prompts are designed to help us understand, on a deeper level, what triggers our sense of empathy for other human beings. I’d like to continue this theme and talk about [...]

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Journaling Sensory Details: What We Hear

February 2, 2011

JOURNALING is a way of giving voice to our inner thoughts and feelings; in a very real sense, it’s a monologue for an audience of one. But journal writing can help us develop more than one voice and in more than one form. We can write in the child’s voice, the teenager’s voice, and the [...]

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Making Ourselves Understood

December 7, 2010

Did you know that journal writing, in addition to helping you make meaning of life’s events, can help improve your communication with others? Whether we’re writing or speaking, our goal is to communicate our thoughts and feelings. When journal writing, you have the freedom to bring up vague ideas and give them definition and form, to surface buried feelings and examine and nurture them into a shape that makes sense.

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Sensory Details: Handwriting Trains the Brain

November 9, 2010

GIVEN my preference for journaling and writing on the computer rather than writing by hand, I thought a recent Wall Street Journal article, “How Handwriting Trains the Brain” (10/5/2010), was interesting. The gist of the article was that the practice of handwriting improves the ability to develop and express ideas. The study was conducted with [...]

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