photo credit: bogenfreund

Many people find it hard to start journal writing. If writing down your intimate thoughts and ideas doesn’t come easy to you, here’s a few suggestions to get you going.

1. Start with the present moment

Begin by writing about what you see or feel in the moment. Describe a scene from your window, or try to capture an image or feeling that represents your current mood.

Go on to describe what it is that has prompted you to write. Do you have a problem that needs to be worked out? Is it perhaps that you need to make an assessment of where you are in life now – what are your expectations? Positioning yourself in the present moment in this way can provide a stepping-stone to a deeper understanding of yourself.

2. Try writing about the immediate past

Find the period in your recent past that was most meaningful to you.
Was it a problem, an achievement, an incident? Perhaps this period spanned a number of months or years. You married, changed jobs, moved to another city.
Try to keep it simple. Ira Progoff recommends brevity. If you can, capture the details in a simple statement that includes an image like:

‘I feel as if I’ve been walking a tightrope …’
‘My journey to now has been a rocky road …’

Don’t make judgements about yourself during this writing exercise. Simply record the facts. If an emotion surfaces that you want to get rid of say goodbye to it in your journal. This is a simple method for dropping the heavy emotional baggage you might be carrying.

3. Write a self-portrait

Describe yourself in a few brief sentences. What sort of person do you believe yourself to be? What events led you to the present moment of understanding? Where are you going?

Using imagery here can also be a great help in defining yourself in your imagination. A few moments of quiet reflection can often produce quite powerful images that contribute to self-knowledge.

4. Try word clustering

When writing seems like a chore, use this technique as an alternative. Sit in a quiet place and relax. Clear your mind by focusing on your breath. When you are calmer, allow a word to come to mind. Focus on this word until you feel it is right for the present. When you are ready, open your eyes, take up your pen and write the word in the middle of a page. Circle it, and then add other words in the same way. Associate these words to others until you have clusters of words on the page.

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Are you ever tempted to split infinitives? If so you’re in good company. They did it in Star Trek, as demonstrated by the title of this post,  and it’s since become an often quoted example.

A split infinitive occurs when an adverb or adverbial phrase is placed between the word to and the relevant verb. In this case the adverb boldly comes between the words to go, and this construction really gives emphasis to the boldness of the enterprise (pun intended). Somehow To go boldly where no man has gone before doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

Although there has been quite a lot of controversy over the practice of splitting infinitives, these days it’s generally acceptable, provided of course the sentence is not weakened or made to sound clumsy.

More than a few writers have found ways to send up the use of split infinitives. Wikipedia gives us this example:

The split infinitive, specifically its famous use in the Star Trek opening sequence, is the basis of a joke from Douglas Adams‘ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

In those days men were real men, women were real women, small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before – and thus was the Empire forged.

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Do you believe in reincarnation? Perhaps not. After all, there’s no real evidence that once we leave this life we’ll be reborn into another, either for better or for worse, depending on what we do here and now.

But whether you believe in reincarnation or not the following exercise can be used to throw some light onwho you are in this very life.

Write about your previous life

The story can be any length. Just let your mind ‘remember’ who you were before your present existence.

Who were you, for example in 1805? Depending on the history you know of your country and culture you will probably identify with a character you may have read about.

I once knew a man who was sure he had been Ramses II. All well and good (and who could dispute the claim?) but consider the implications of placing yourself in a particularly exalted incarnation. The Karmic fallout from the actions of most of our more illustrious historical figures really doesn’t bear thinking about.

Some writers play it safer by choosing significant but ordinary characters, such as governesses or clergymen. Whatever direction you decide to take with this exercise, remember it is just that – an exercise. The character and situation you choose will be revealing. Writing in the first person will help to stimulate your imagination. For example:

I am a nineteenth century archaeologist. I have a great ambition to travel to parts of the world that are just blank places on the map. I want to explore the Silk Road and to look for the buried cities of lost civilizations. I need to gather an expedition together for this purpose, but I have little money and I haven’t managed to convince the Geographical Society that they should fund my research. I’m hoping to find a rich sponsor, someone who believes as I do, that the past has great secrets still to be uncovered. There is a wealth of knowledge buried deep beneath the sands. If I can get there I’ll show the world what it has lost.

This ‘earlier incarnation’ of the writer shows a great desire for knowledge and a need to explore the hidden mysteries of life. There are also links here to the ‘hero’ archetype, about to embark on a quest. The need to find a sponsor might indicate the hopes for new connections with power and influence.

Writing in this way provides us with a valuable insight into our hidden desires, concerns and hopes forthe future. By recreating ourselves as characters in a fantasy we also have the opportunity to recognise our true goals and to work towards achieving them.

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I prefer to think of it as ‘Writer’s Blues’. It’s what happens when I’m faced with a blank page (or screen) and it feels as if I’m laced into a strait-jacked that’s strangling my creativity.

There are ‘sunny day scenarios’ when I get up, hit the keyboard and keep writing till I’m done. But then there are days when nothing seems to go right, when creativity has been simply switched off and negative thoughts such as – ’what’s the point, no-one’s going to read it anyway, do something else with your life’ — start to reinforce the feeling of gloom.

But we can all take heart from the fact that productive writers through the ages have struggled with the same problem. Joseph Conrad once wrote that his total output for the day amounted to adding a full stop to a paragraph in the morning when a particular gent walked by his window, and then removing it when the same man passed by in the afternoon.

But what if the writing blues are a necessary part of the creative process?

On days when the blues seem set in like winter rain there is often a breakthrough. The clouds suddenly give way and there’s a wonderful moment of inspiration that is nothing less than clear sunshine. This is the moment when true creativity happens and the inner demons of despair are sent running for cover. So the lesson here is — don’t give up the struggle too soon. Realise that something is really going on at a deeper level. All you need to do is allow it to happen.

Here’s a few tips to help you wrestle your muse to the ground

In her book Writing Down the Bones
Natalie Goldberg recommends using timed exercises of ten minutes, twenty minutes or even an hour when you write freely, keep you hand moving, and let anything that pops into your head appear on the page. This feels a little like automatic writing with somebody else in control, but the technique does work. With practice you can write through your resistance to the point where real writing begins.

Natalie describes the process of capturing thought like this:

First thoughts have tremendous energy. It is the way the mind first flashes on something. The internal censor usually squelches them, so we live in the realm of second and third thoughts, twice and three times removed from the first fresh flash.

A similar technique is described in The Artist’s Way
by Julia Cameron. She encourages her readers to start by writing ‘morning pages’ every day. These are basically three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing, or simply moving the hand across the page and writing down whatever comes to mind.

Julia has this to say about her technique:

Morning pages will teach you that your mood doesn’t really matter. Some of the best creative work is done on the days when you feel that everything you’re doing is just plain junk. The morning pages will teach you to stop judging and just let yourself write.

So when the writer’s blues drags you down, let yourself go with these techniques and free the writer within.

Related post…

Map Your Creative Ideas
Like the picture? See more photos of danbo on flickr by craigmdennis

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