creative non-fiction | persephone's step-sisters

JOURNAL THAT

a guide to writing

cynthia gregory

Everyone has heard the old chestnut to “write what you know about.” But, cherished friend, it ain’t that easy. We’ve also been told to “write like you talk” – and that’s just foolish. This kind of advice just leads to unrealistic expectations, not to mention bad syntax, sloppy verb conjugation, and mangled grammar. This is not to say that you should worry about any of these in your journal because journaling ought to be at the very least an exercise in jumping into the stream of consciousness with both feet and an inner tube.

Journaling is not for sissies. You have to really want it with a desire born so deep only a seismographer can find its source. You have to do it; you just do. And you don’t have to explain or justify it any more than you have to justify breathing. Great genius is born of desire. And once the desire to write is established, the next most important part is means; and the method of true genius is to journal by hand. You know, the old fashioned way. Pen. Paper. Good lighting, a comfortable chair. Not too comfortable, just saying.

Why, you may well ask, is it important to write by hand when its so much easier to tap away on three rows of electronic buttons? Isn’t that why God invented Steven Jobs? The answer is that true writing is a tactile experience and because you think differently when you have to push a pen over a rough sheet of reconstituted tree pulp and because the process of writing is refined – just a little – when you have to make the words exact and legible and pretty on the page with nerves and tissues and with the fine muscles of your fingers. Writing becomes a whole body experience when you do it by hand. Transcribe your thoughts later if you must, but start first with an unblemished piece of paper and fill it with observations, feelings, and a million details. Write. By. Hand.

Writing by hand is visceral and it connects with the most primitive parts of the brain; also the most elevated and elegant parts of the thinking apparatus. However, don’t think too much: just write. A mentor once said to me, “Don’t worry about how it all comes together. Just write. The story will take care of itself.”

So I pass this along to you: write. Just, write. And I really insist: by hand. So, you get cramps in your fingers; so what. You’ll get over it. And when you do, you will have written – and you feel like you climbed Kilimanjaro.

to be continued. . .

JOURNAL THAT

a guide to writing

cynthia gregory

A journal is not a diary. Well, it can be, but at its best, it is not. It is not about recording your deepest, darkest fears; the ones you don’t want anyone (especially that one you love) to read. It is not about judgment in the sense of “am I a good writer?” or “what does it say about me if I can’t put a few scribbles on a blasted sheet of paper?” kind of judgment. It is, in part, killing the editor in your head. You know, the one who says, “who cares what you think? You know you’re never going to write anything worth reading anyway, why bother?”

Kill the editor. The editor is only your insecurities with carte blanche and the power to stop you in your tracks before you uncap your pen. This is what you do: write. Write for fifteen minutes every day, no matter what. Even if you just write “I have nothing to say today.” Even if you just fill the page with gibberish. Write knowing that our journal is not about you. Do you get that?

Your journal isn’t about you, sweetheart.

No offense, and as important as you are, your journal is not an extension of you. Rather, it is like a Polaroid camera that you aim at everything around you and with which you snap a photo. This café. That conversation. That wide, beautiful coastline with clouds hovering over the water like cottoncandy and the smell of the surf pushing spring toward the desert on a mission from God.

It is a recording. It is a gift from the universe. How is it a gift? It is a gift because no one, not one soul who has ever been or will be, has the power of observation from your perspective, with your history, with your love of crossword puzzles or majong or Thai noodles with peanut sauce. You are a dazzling flower on the furthest branch of the tree of life and what you see around you is a devotion in the truest sense.

So write about the hamburger you ate for lunch. Write about the girl who brought it to you, whose shoes seemed unnaturally worn maybe because she’s working her way through art school and she deserves a little extra tip so maybe she can sleep in tomorrow and dream of a watercolor that will turn the world on its collective ear. Your journal is not about you. It is a gift to the world.

My ex-husband’s grandmother kept a journal every day of her married life. When Grandma died at 96, my father-in-law gave a journal of the year they were born to each of the grand kids. You could say that there was nothing extraordinary about it, but there was something precious in the grocery lists she made in her spidery hand. There was a door into the life of a woman who made a family so big that galaxies were created just to contain the love she had for them.

The laundry lists, the shoes to be taken to the repair man, the small concerns, were a door into a world we none of us had seen before. This was a picture of a woman not as we knew her, but a woman who when she wrote the journal, was younger than we who were reading it, and it was astonishing.

So write your journal, and don’t worry about being brilliant. Just write. Just do it, knowing whatever you say is sacred, in a context you can’t even imagine. Or not.

Hallelujah, amen, and wahoo!

to be continued. . .