Sensory Details

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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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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Journaling the Sensory Details: Touch

September 14, 2010

THINK for a moment about the sense of touch (the ability to feel temperature, pressure, vibration, and texture) and how much it affects our lives. Now ask yourself, how much of your journal or memoir writing includes the wonderful details this sense offers us? If you’re like me, we don’t always include a lot of [...]

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Sensory Details: The sense of smell

July 27, 2010

THE SENSE OF SMELL has always been my weakest sense, and I have always envied writers whose sense of smell is strong and present in their storytelling. Writers who talk about the steamy, yeast-filled fragrance of a loaf of bread straight from the oven, who remember scents of lilacs and mown grass from their childhood, [...]

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Clover Heaven

March 1, 2010

ON A RECENT WALK, the afternoon light filtered softly through a thick web of oak branches and leaves, the tree branches forming an archway that beckoned me into nature’s hall and to some magical place beyond. Spider web filaments, stretching from branch to branch, danced in the breeze. Beneath my feet, a delicate carpet of [...]

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