June 20, 1997
Panning for Ideas
Sifting Through Journals for Inspiration
I've been lax lately about keeping my writing journal up to date. I've kept a journal for more years than I can remember, but I certainly wouldn't call it a diary. Some months, I'm lucky if I write once a week, let alone once a day.
Perhaps the problem is boredom. After twenty-odd years of writing in spiral notebooks, maybe I need to do something different. In truth, I have tried other avenues, methods to keep me going. I've bought or borrowed books on journaling. I've read Natalie Goldberg's books (Writing Down the Bones, and The Wild Mind) cover to cover several times, using her exercises as jumping off points. I've started pages with a question, or a quote, or a fragment of a half-remembered dream. My latest inspiration is to use my journals as a serious resource for ideas. Oh, I've used my journals all along, especially for writing poetry and fiction. But I realized that within the pages of the spiral notebooks that line the bottom shelf of my bookcase, I have a guide to all my passions, my disappointments, my emotional triggers.
Reading through old journals can be humbling, as well. I read things I wrote in college, and I wonder how I ever managed to convince myself that I could be a writer. I mean, there I was, majoring in International Politics, and what I really wanted was to be a writer. The trouble is, all my writing either sounded like policy position papers, or the ravings of a stressed-out adolescent.
In later years, I learned a little more control. But control is not the essence of journaling. I find that the material in my journals is most interesting and most useful in my writing when I go off on tangents or rage about some petty slight I suffered at a social gathering. That's the stuff to build my writing.
The other nice side effect of gleaning the fruitful bits from my journals is that I'm usually inspired to start writing again. Sometimes I'll start a special journal, a notebook based simply on my reaction to things I wrote several years ago. Aside from expanding on my original ideas, I'm fascinated by how much my viewpoint can change over the course of a few years.
If you've never written a journal page in your life, or if you're just plain stuck the way I've been, maybe you need some inspiration. Finding online resources for improving your journal- writing skills can be a real challenge. You might want to check out Journal Writing Resources, including Ira Progoff's Intensive Journal Workshop, Writing the Natural Way, The New Diary, and more. The Readers and Writers Resource Page has a Diary and Journal Booklist, including some online resources. A Yahoo search yields about 50 diaries and journals, most quirky and self-serving, that might get you going.
I find inspiration in the most unlikely places. If my own past writings don't get me started, I pick up a book at random and select a starting point.
I've written some stimulating poems based on a simple method. I can't recall what the method's called, but it goes like this: Pick up a book, any book. Fiction seems to work best, but you might want to try poetry or nonfiction, or even the morning paper. Now, pick a word to use as a starting point. This could be your name, the author's name, or something you plucked out of the air. Write this word vertically down the left side of your page. Go through the writing sample you've chosen, and copy the first word you come to that begins with the first letter of your chosen word. If you've chosen "coffee" as your word, and the first word you come to that starts with a 'c' is 'can,' then write that down. Don't just let it stand on it's own, though. Copy some of the words around it, from three to six words before or after or both. Now continue through the sample this way, rewriting your selected word again as needed until you've filled a couple journal pages or you've seen some good stuff leap out at you. Now, read the journal entry aloud and see what you've got. It may not be good, but it's often idea-inspiring, and that's the point.
An alternative exercise is to choose a writing sample, but this time, simply select a number such as seven. Write down every seventh word, one right after the other as if you're writing sentences. Try this one for at least one journal page and see what you've got. Chances are, you'll find at least one nugget that's a keeper. Who knows? You might even hit paydirt.
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Writers on the Net
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