Showing posts with label Journals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Journals. Show all posts

July 6, 2022

Thoughts on Writing


Thoughts on Writing

I love that word, Metacognition. Wikipedia defines it as “an awareness of one's thought processes and an understanding of the patterns behind them.” In taking a moment to be mindful about my own writing process and patterns, here’s what I discovered:

I love writing in my big book with my big handwriting. Two pages fill fast. Since sketchbooks are unlined, my handwriting tends to slope to the right as I move down the page. I used to hate my handwriting. It felt cramped and forced, just like having to learn cursive when we moved to tiny Luxembourg when I was seven. Later, when I went to boarding school in Dover, England, I created a secret code to write in my diary, which was mostly about crushes and middle school betrayals. I would get in trouble for my bad handwriting, especially in boarding school, where I was chastised for using a ballpoint pen. Now I see my handwriting as cryptic, magical, and tender, just like my heart. And, you know, witches spell it out.

I went a little crazy right after college, and moved to Idaho, where the rent for the Moravia schoolhouse was a mere $100 a month. I worked one day a week looking after eighty year old Betty Fox, while the rest of the time I worked on myself. Part of my healing was going through the Creative Journal by Lucia Capacchione. This is where I got the idea of starting in the middle of the journal and flipping back and forth with my entries, rather than starting at the beginning and marching through. This was pleasing after reading the French feminist Monique Wittig’s book, Les Guérillères, which is not written in linear time, but circular.

At different times I've had different notebooks - one is called “Love: A Field Notebook.” Then there are Amber's journals, which we kept in the diaper bag since Drama and I stopped talking to each other. We needed to communicate about naps, meals, and small day care events, and they now live in a tupperware box in the Tuff shed. In high school, my art teacher Mr.Bartman required us to fill a small, fat sketchbook with drawings at the end of each semester. I would fill the other half with poems, musings, lyrics, like any other high-schooler. And while this was supposed to be a daily practice, I would cram in a week's worth of drawings while waiting for my dad to pick me up after therapy on Wednesday afternoons.

I've kept various journals and diaries over my lifetime. At some point I burned seventeen volumes, ripping out the few poems I thought worthy. Amber was appalled as she had wanted to read them, but to me they were just a chronicle of pain and grief after the divorce, and I didn’t want her to read all of my scrumbly feelings towards her other parent. But I keep coming back to the big black sketchbooks. The first one spans a good decade, now this latest will be filled by the end of this class.

I use many different pens, but love thin Sharpies the most. They do tend to bleed, so pasting something every other page helps. When learning how to write cursive, we were forced to write in ink, either black, royal blue, or blue-black. I remember the stationary store, with the ultra expensive Cartier pens - the ones you got for graduation - under lock and key. My mom bought me a Happy Pen that was a sunny yellow. Recently one of my clients bought me a set of fountain pens in an array of pastel colors, and there was a certain satisfaction in popping the cartridge in and having the ink begin to flow across the page. 

I never learned to type, I learned to bake. Here I am at fifty-five and still hunt and peck with one finger, but it is fast. At the writer’s retreat I would use my iPad, but felt the tick, tick, tick sound more potentially distracting to my fellow retreatants than the scratching of my pen. Sometimes I dictate, which is great for thought process but editing all the punctuation and things made up by auto-correct is a chore of its own.

I tend to write in sprints, sometimes marathons, rather than a daily jog like Stephan King. Four day writers retreats, six or eight week classes, Write30. I'll do the work, I'll get the juice out of it, but once done I could easily be next engaged in en plein air watercolor or underwater basket weaving for the next few months. Often I'll add artwork after the fact - collages, collected ephemera that used to go into photo albums, but now get scrapped here, print outs of online inspiration, whether poems from Instagram or my own peculiar ramblings.

Usually I write my two pages, the raw stuff, around nine or ten in the morning, after I’ve finished my various crossword puzzles. Sometimes I write outside at the teak table under the Wisteria, or in my car before class, almost always afterwards when I take myself out to lunch at Burger and have my little cup of carbs -mac and cheese with bacon on top.

Right now I’m sitting in the backroom with both the black cat and the calico vying for space next to me, sketchbook cradled between my left arm and a pillow on my lap, as I baby the words forth. There’s the smell of ginger lemon tea and the occasional croak of crows or thrums of hummers. I used to time myself, but I tend to space out while writing, so two pages a day is reasonable. At some point in the week, usually if my husband is gone, I’ll dictate pieces into my phone and email them to myself for online editing. Depending on my schedule, I’ll spend some time polishing, editing, embellishing these nuggets, usually in secret pockets of time found when waiting for clients, waiting for my friend to arrive, or waiting for pasta to boil.


December 7, 2016

Journaling for Success



“The most important promises are the ones I make to myself.”
- Maryanne Radmacher

• I use tarot and astrology as a daily meditation tool, to focus on my career, my relationships, and my creativity. They serve as moment in my journey where I look at the map of my life and decide which direction to take. But I don’t just stay stuck looking at the map - journaling is one of the steps I take to put into action what I have been contemplating.

• You can have many different kinds of journals, that you write in at different times of your life. Just as your checkbook is a record of your spending habits, journals can reflect your patterns and serve as a reminder of the positive “emotional deposits” of life.
• Kinds of journals: Business notes, daily affirmations, dreams (night and day), poetry, sketches, coloring books, blank books or notebook paper put into a binder, a photo album or scrap books, engagement calenders.

• Who is your audience? Well, you, of course, but it also could be your children, your spouse or lover, your business colleagues, your therapist, your best friend.

• Privacy: there is so much temptation to read someone else’s journal. When my lover read mine, I stopped writing for 5 or 6 years. When getting divorced, I read my spouses' journal and found out things I really didn’t want to know. Talk about Pandora’s box.

• There is a lot of power in writing in your journal (or on loose leaf paper) all your thoughts and feelings, and then burning or otherwise destroying them. Recently I drew a horrible picture of myself being controlled by my last lover - it was quite a relief to destroy it.

• Time: even just five minutes a day can grow into a disciplined practice (like flossing your teeth or exercise). This is time for YOU, time to focus on achieving something you desire. keeping a little notebook in your bag is helpful for those odd moments of standing in the bank line. Putting the TV on mute and jotting down thoughts during commercials can reactivate your brain waves.

• Your other favorite tool is your PEN: do you like blue or black ink? Pencil? Colored pencils? Markers? Paints? I highly recommend crayons...
• To quote from the 5 of Wands card - Keep your expression flowing. Stop editing yourself and let go of concern about what comes out. Be playful. The openness of play allows for inventiveness and newness in a way that high expectations do not. (from The Tarot of Transformation by Willow Arlenea & Jasmin Lee Cori)

• You are writing your story and you can change your story - one exercise I did was to divide the page into columns and in the first write a sentence that begins “I wish...” the second column is the same sentence that starts with “I will”. This takes you out of wishful thinking into your will power, because it pushes you to the next step of figuring out HOW to achieve your goal. Examples:

I wish I had more money to I WILL have more money
I wish I was friends with my ex to I WILL be friends with my ex
I wish I had more tome to write in my journal to I WILL have more time to write in my journal

• Other exercises:
- Goals in the next month, year, five years
- List what you are afraid of. Burn it.
- List what makes you happy. Keep it.
- Pull a tarot card, medicine (animal) card, or angel card. Sketch it.
- Cartoons of you
- Songs, poems, quotes by others that inspire you
- Same as above, go from “I fear...” to “I wonder...”
- Pure color (finger painting)
- Create a couples journal, or a friendship journal
- That letter you would never send
- Who am I?
- Love letters to yourself

• Some book recommendations:
Earth Art Critters coloring books by Sue Coccia
The Coloring Book for Big Girls by Sudie Rukusin
When Your Heart Speaks, Take Good Notes: The Healing Power of Writing by Susan Borkin
The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity -- by Julia Cameron
The Creative Journal by Lucia Capacchione

“Turn your wish bone, daughter, into a back bone”

- author unknown

October 1, 2014

The Power of Journaling



An introduction to the power of journaling for personal growth and positive change. Learn how your journal can be a working tool to focus your intentions to achieve your goals. Illustrated with many examples from her own work, the presentation includes exercises to stimulate your own journaling habits.

Whether you use an old fashioned diary or write a blog, publish your work or burn it, you'll find inspiration in this short video.

Kayla Garnet Rose has been journaling since the age of nine. 

October 16, 2013

Silent Retreat, Big Sur


My summer retreat started early, on Thursday, after dropping Amber off at her other parent's, knowing she was also getting ready for her big adventure in Europe. I spent the afternoon in relative silence, exchanging a few words with a neighbor, chatting with the cats, mostly fettering around, packing for the weekend. I had been quite surprised by the last minute email from Chip deciding not to go on the retreat, but was glad that he was taking care of himself, taking care of business, and most importantly, willing to look in on the cats over the weekend.

Friday I cleaned the house, mowed the lawn, did laundry and dishes, put clean sheets on the bed, not just for Chip to enjoy but for me to come home to order and grace after the retreat. I gave up on writing my final paper, realizing quite simply I had more research to do than could accomplish in a few hours,and went on a walk instead, depositing checks at the ATM and stopping for a few goodies from New Leaf before heading down the coast.

Despite leaving early, traffic was ridiculous at 2pm, construction creating bottle necks and head aches as I contemplated alternate routes. I decided the truth was I had nothing else to do, plenty of time, and that this was a part of the retreat, sinking into my thoughts rather than getting distractedly the radio, the hum of the air conditioner my only tune. I found myself in a deep fantasy of our wedding day, now that our plans had changed quite drastically from a large celebration with friends and family to what I had originally envisioned, a completely private ceremony between the two of us. My fancies ranged from trekking out to Point Lobos to skydiving in Hollister, ballroom dancing in the city to quiet beaches in Kauai.

After twenty minutes of stop and go, traffic let up after Park Ave, creating smooth sailing for the rest of the two hour trip down the coast. I waved at my parents house in seaside, noticed the driveway to highlands inn, thought about stopping at the Lucia lodge, and suddenly there was the turn into the New Camaldoli Hermitage. The two mile driveway switch-backed over the golden hills bursting with life - Scottish broom, purple sweet peas, pampas grass cheering me on as red tailed hawks swooped overhead.

I went into the bookstore to register, and to my surprise the assistant on duty not only lives in Santa Cruz, but we live on the same street. Small world, interesting way to meet a neighbor. I drove my car down to the hermitage, found my room and unpacked. I sat outside in my little enclosed garden, enjoying the late afternoon sun. A blue jay flew down from the fig tree, looked at me, ruffled it's feathers and pretended to be hurt. I know this bird ruse to lure predators away, and sure enough as I peered up into the leafy green foliage I could see a nest.

Little peeping noises commenced, and as I sat half a dozen teeny fuzz balls began to appear on the tiny trail by my garden. After a few minutes a mama quail appeared, saw me, and quickly ushered her young into the bushes. Hummingbirds came to sip from the orange monkey flowers as I looked across the ocean.

After a light supper, I walked over to Scholastica were the writing workshops were held. A dozen women sat in a circle, each with several journals piled at their feet, candles on the table flickering over an altar of stones, statues, seashells and pinec ones. I realized that I only had a couple pages left in my journal, so the rest of the weekend would write in old journals on random blank pages, something I found rather pleasing in disrupting any linear conceptions of time.

Saturday I woke up early and started reading a book my daughter had recommended. At 9am we had another workshop, reviewing our journals for themes. After lunch I spent the entire afternoon in my little garden, devouring the four hundred page book. After finishing it, I decided to walk down the two mile driveway for some exercise. Going down was easy enough, but hiking back was way more of a struggle, and I had to stop it seemed every ten yards or so, resting in the shade of tree, photographing the purple sweet peas, California poppies and live oaks. We had another evening workshop, after which I was quite content to simply go to bed.

Sunday I ate quiche for breakfast, then went to the morning session. The rest of the day was evenly divided between reviewing old journals, collating in scraps of paper that had accumulated over the years, and creating a healing mandala for my new blended family. I had a lot of satisfaction in  ripping out some pages and  destroying them, no need to cling to the pain of the past. After dinner I started packing, already thinking about the cats, emails, the rest of my week, reminding my self to stay present and enjoy the last of my stay.

Monday morning I woke up early again, took a shower and finished packing up the car. I took a shorter walk to stretch out my calves, still aching from the hike up the hill on Saturday. The fog filled in the valley and there was this feeling of looking down into the clouds, pale pinks and golds dancing in the snowy whiteness, the crisp blue sky above. Wafts of mists would come and envelop me, not the least bit cold, I felt like I could take bites our of the fog, feed myself on the droplets of moisture. Circling back around to the hermitage I found a picnic table to sit and contemplate, writing down my notes for the weekend, eager to share them with Chip after getting back home to Santa Cruz.

February 13, 2013

Looking Through Old Journals

What is in your old journals?
Once I was a diamond in the rough
Life was hard and life felt tough
Times I felt fragmented, times I felt shattered
Ultimately I found out what really mattered

Cutting away what was simply not sublime
Polishing my edges, simply tailing the time
Like a precision jeweler, chipping away the past
Revealing the heart of the jewel that really does last

My burdens, my woes, all of my stressors
Let this lump of coal do good under pressure
I have many facets and each of them shines
I own all my flaws, they are uniquely mine

Sometimes cold, sometimes hard, always brilliant
My jeweled tones have become more resilient
Times I am humble, times quite ferocious
I know now that I am always precious

I am sparkly and glittery, something quite rare
It took years and years of work to get me there
What was once simply a part of the earth
Now knows her true self her diamond self worth

Everyday I can take care of body and soul
Exercise my mind and exercise my health
In looking through my old journals what I discover:
I have always been engaged with my self.