40 days of journal writing....

Yep, that's it.

I am making a pledge to journal every morning for 40 consecutive days, and I will chart my progress on here. Of course, I journal 4 or 5 times a week as it is, but I want to explore this as a creative and spiritual discipline and see where it might take me.

We need to create a habit of journal writing.

I would invite you to join me, from today, in your own 40-day challenge of journal writing.

The best thing about a challenge is that, if the well really is dry, we can write about that very sense of not knowing what to do.

But in our creative life there is always something to write about – some challenge, some question, some joy, some realisation.

If we are on the creative path, every day offers a new insight – at the very least a sentence we can write.

Even if we did a sentence a day – what a fascinating 40 sentences that would be!

But I would urge you to consider 40 days, 5 minutes a day, simply asking the page: what do I need to know right now?

There is no right or wrong answer!

Sometimes our creative spirit is expressed in the quotidian. Perhaps the very best and most powerfully creative thing you could do that day is the ironing – it’s been piling up for days.
But write about how you feel – what were your thoughts during the ironing? How might we have made it a creative task? Or perhaps it already was?

Journal Your Challenges - an exercise

Sometimes our challenges really build up and begin to suffocate us.
And sometimes we are not in a position to share these worries with other people. Sometimes sharing them with others is not the right thing to do.
But we can always share them with our journal.

Exercise:

Write down a  few sentences about a challenge you are currently facing in your life.

Write down the principal emotions that challenge evokes in you.

Can you turn this challenge into a question? Or is there some specific element you need to work out? Write it down.

Now lets sit together in meditation for a few minutes, our eyes closed, asking ourselves that question, looking for answers. But please just stay in meditation – no writing anything down.

Keep asking yourself that question, over and over. It is your mantra, your koan.

Now write down any responses or answers you received. They don’t have to make sense. They don’t have to be the perfect answer, or any answer at all. Just write down what came to you as you sat with that question.

Any insights?

Were you prompted to take some action?

I want you to review the observations that come to you during this process. What doesn’t make sense today may be perfectly clear in two days time.

These responses have come from somewhere deep inside you – or perhaps outside of you.

Either way, this is a process that makes you realise that your journal is an invaluable practical friend. And it will never get bored with your silly questions – and it cant be hurt by your doubts or annoyed by your anxieties.

Journal writers recommend....

I think that to lead a fully creative life some sort of journal-keeping is necessary. We need to have some way we can record our feelings, impressions and inspirations. And have some way of going back to them later for ideas and reminders.

I have been a sporadic journal-keeper since my late teens. Some years I go really hard, and other years I will only journal occasionally. I have also used Julia Cameron's Morning Pages system and have done Progoff's Journal Workshop a number of times. Whenever I am consistently keeping a journal I always see the benefits in my life, and I only ever abandon it out of sheer laziness.

Naturally, when I am travelling I journal quite seriously, many pages a day and taking an hour or so at a time to record my ideas and impressions. These are then the basis for my books.

As part of my Year of Cheer project in 2015 I have made a commitment to journal daily. As part of that process, and to give me prompts and ideas to keep my journalling fresh, I have been reading and working with a really lovely and practical book called Keeping a Journal You Love by Sheila Bender. It has been a tremendous help, and a fascinating read, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

One of the things that has me captivated are the books that are referenced, both by Bender herself and by the various writers she uses as case studies. Book recommendations within books are always interesting, and I often make a note of them. I have discovered many fascinating books this way.

So I thought I would share with you some of the books that are being recommended and talked about on the pages of Keeping a Journal You Love and why. I think you will agree it makes for a most intriguing reading list:

1. In the excerpts from Denise Levertov's journal (one of my favourite parts of this book) she writes about enjoying reading Emma, which she says is better than Pride and Prejudice (an opinion, incidentally, shared by two Australian writers and Austen experts: Susannah Fullerton and Damon Young).

2. Levertov also writes about Voyage Round My Room by Xavier de Maistre. I must say that I have seen this book referred to before, but reading its description now makes it sound fascinating. I must read it.

3 Ditto for Raj by Gita Mehta, another of Levertov's readings. Gita Mehta is the author of Karma Cola, one of the most funny and insightful looks at the meeting between Western mind and Indian spirituality. I have read that book several times, so shall seek out Raj.

4. Levertov also talks about re-reading Okamura's Awakening to Prayer. I have never heard of this book before, but it has gone right to the top of my "Must Read" list.

5. Poet Maxine Kumin says that she is "keenly interested" in Sylvia Plath's journals.

6. David Mas Masumoto loves Joan Didion's very apropos essay "On Keeping a Notebook" contained in her legendary collection (much beloved of Brain Pickings) Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

7. Poet William Matthews talks about David Wagoner's edited edition of Pulitzer-prize winning poet Theodore Roethke's notebooks, Straw for Fire and how Roethke would go through his notebooks looking for inspiration for new material.

8. Fenton Johnson writes about how fragments of his letters written during his partner's death from AIDS later found their way into his novel Scissors, Paper, Rock.

9. Novelist Robert Hellenga writes about how he has been influenced by Dorothea Brande's classic book on Becoming a Writer. He is not alone there - it is still a book that inspires many. Brande was also a prominent New Thought teacher, though she is remembered now mostly for her seminal book on writing. She is utterly charming.


10.  Sheila Bender writes about how she is inspired by a passage from a book by Reginald Gibbons called Sweetbitter.

11. She says journal groups (what a lovely idea!) might benefit from working with Julia Cameron’s aforementioned The Artist's Way. I was part of an Artist's Way group this time last year, run by my friend, the talented travel writer Rosamund Burton. Doing it as a group is a great way to keep discipline and motivation up.

12. Some noteworthy book mentioned in the bibliography include: The Collected Prose of James Agee

13. The Journals of Andre Gide - these are fascinating and I still have my battered edition pulled from a junk heap on Victoria Rd in the mid 90s :-)

14. Tristine Rainer's The New Diary - a beautiful book I have also worked with in the past. Must pick it up again.

15. Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse - most people know I am NOT a Woolf fan. I have read this book several times (including studying it at university). Still none the wiser. 

Kathleen Alcala

16. And finally, one of the contributors is Kathleen Alcala who wrote an interesting collection of short fiction called Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalists.