Image: from this months mini journal

Writing

has been our quote theme for

May 2023

Below…you’ll find all of the quotes from May along with some of my thoughts, journaling prompts, suggestions and questions to get you thinking about

why we write, what we write and different (creative) ways we can think about writing.

I hope something here will get your journaling juices flowing…

Just a reminder…to check out our new feature on these Journal Prompt Pages of the website…??

Scroll down to the bottom of the page you’ll find you can now leave your thoughts, ideas & comments on what I’ve shared with you here.

Check it out at the bottom of this page

You might want to comment on one particular quote that I’ve used this month or share a particular response to this months theme.

  As always I love to hear your comments and receive your feedback and I wanted to make it even easier for you by adding this new function

I hope you enjoy exploring this months quotes,

questions, prompts & suggestions…

Question…

• Is ‘writing’ the only way to keep a journal ?

• How creative can we be with ‘writing’ in our journals ?

We began the month of May and our musings on the theme of ‘writing’ with this quote from Pat Schneider…

WEEK 1

As I mentioned in our Facebook Group… Pat Schneider wrote a wonderful book, from which I took this quote, called

‘Writing Alone and with Others’

If you are at all curious about writing, I couldn’t recommend this book highly enough!  There is a section in the book which addresses the question… ‘why keep a journal’ ?  Apart from the above quote which I took from that section she also wrote this…

A journal is a place free of editors, critics, teachers, and well-meaning but ruinous relatives and friends.  In a journal, thought and feeling can come together without self-consciousness……It is in a journal that many writers for the first time take the risk of writing honestly

Pat Schneider, Writing Alone and with Others p.68

I think this is a great quote to get us think about why we might keep a journal

Why keep a journal…?  Because your life…no matter who you are…has significance !

Here’s a thought…

If you discovered a long lost diary or journal that had belonged to your great grandmother or great grandfather, wouldn’t you be fascinated to read about the day to day intricacies of their lives, their thoughts and ideas, their aspirations and dreams ?

Suggestion….

• See how many alternative ways you can think of to ‘write’ in your journal…try thinking ‘outside the box’

A few ideas to get you going…

• using some form of printing or stamping as I have done in the image above
• making lists of random words that come in response to a quote or prompt
• going on a treasure hunt for words or letters in magazines etc., in response to a quote or prompt
• How else might you get ‘creative’ with writing in your journal ??

WEEK 2

There’s a strange alchemy that can happen on the page.  As Julia Cameron suggests here in this quote…sometimes, if we can get a question ‘out of our head’, so to speak, and onto the page, then we can occasionally (more often than we might expect) find that solutions, suggestions or answers come to us as a result of the process of doing the writing.  It can help to stop the seemingly never ending loop going around in our heads and we can reframe the thoughts and questions in alternative ways.

Suggestion…

• Think of a question or dilemma that’s been rumbling around your head & write it out.  Write it out in different ways, frame it differently.  Write it as if you were asking someone else the same question.
• Write down all the thoughts that come flooding in, in answer to the question, no matter how ‘crazy’
• Keep reminding yourself not to ‘edit’, just write
• Resist, for now, the temptation to read it back ( until your sure that you’ve wrung that question out for all its worth ! )
• Remember….it doesn’t need to ‘make sense’
• Allow it all time to ‘settle’, go do something else, maybe come back to it later

WEEK 3

Questions…

• who are you writing for in your journal ?
• who is your audience ?
• what, for you, is the purpose of your journal ?

Prompt…

• Try answering these questions in your Journal

A Quote…

To write is above all else to construct a self…Journal entries and life histories as well as fictions, poems and plays are variations on the most fundamental human need to know oneself deeply and in relation to the world

Deena Metzger, Writing Alone Together

I don’t know about you, but that seems to sum up all the reason I need to keep a journal, in whatever way I can…to help me understand myself and my place in the world.

WEEK 4

Writing in our Journals, we explore, we ask questions & search for answers.  We learn to understand ourselves and our own stories, better.

When we start writing, when we start asking questions on the page, we don’t need to know what the answers will be or where the questions might  take us. We just need to start….we don’t need to know the destination in order to begin the journey.  Just as every journey begins with one step…so every story begins with one word.

Prompt…

• What will your one word be today
• Write it down
• Tomorrow …write one more
• Come to the page to write just one word.  If more come…bonus ! If not…job done !

Now for a quick look at my Mini Journal for May…

I really enjoyed making this months mini journal !!  I had to do it in a hurry because I was preparing to go away on a holiday.

(Note to self…..sometimes the most satisfying things emerge when I’m not ‘trying’ to hard or ‘overthinking’ it !!)

The pages of the mini journal are a photocopy of some random writing I had experimented with ( have a bit of a thing for pens and trying out different styles of writing) . I love that there is the ghost of a shadow showing through from the writing on the other side of the page !

I printed out the quotes themselves onto some parchment type paper I had lying around ( this paper has great texture)  I tore those down to size using a deckle edge ruler and then used some ink to highlight some of the edges.  On the front cover I used some rubber stamps to write the word ‘writing’.

I’ve got several different types of washi tape that have writing on them and so added these to the pages.  On the black pages, I practised one of my favourite writing exercises….not over thinking it, I repeated five or six words over & over, working quickly,  keeping my pen on the page as much as possible and not stressing about ‘errors’ etc.  It’s really interesting to see what emerges from an exercise like this.

Question….

• can you spot what my five or six words were ?

Are you a member of our Facebook Group   ?

In the group,  I share our weekly  quote and usually, to accompany it, I share some of my thoughts, ideas, suggestions.  Not all of those make it to here on the website. So, why not join the group to make sure you don’t miss anything

FIND US HERE

Join me next month for our new theme…

‘Stories’