I flew to LA to host a few events back in January, one of them was a Creative Journaling session based on Jenna Matecki’s The Hours Before Dusk. I was staying with a good friend of mine in the city, and I urged her to come to the session. I promised wine, catharsis, and a nice dose of introspection. She did not want to go, but being the very kind and generous person that she is, she came. I think I know what she was expecting—not being able to write when forced to, having to share her writing with a group of strangers, wasting time doing something she didn’t love doing (writing) instead of focusing on something she knows she likes.
Throughout the session, I read a poem from The Hours Before Dusk, gave a journaling prompt, let everyone write for five or so minutes, and then I encouraged everyone to share not what they wrote but how the prompt made them feel. People were brave! We got deep quickly, sharing personal things about our families, lost loves, career aspirations, and more. I wanted to take it easy on my friend, but I urged her to speak up. Her insights were beautiful and heartfelt, and I watched her get more comfortable (and more emotional!) as the workshop continued.
By the end of the two hours, she was a creative journaling convert. She told me how great of a release it was to write down feelings she didn’t even know she’d been holding onto, how nice it was to take a quiet couple of hours to dive into her imagination and inner dialogue. The next day she left for a ski trip with a few girl friends and she brought the journaling handouts from the session with her. She texted me later telling me she’d hosted her own session with her friends, and she told me how much they enjoyed it.
I say this to say: you might not want to journal. It might intimidate you, it might seem like a waste of time, you might tell yourself you’re not a writer or that writing is too hard, you might be too busy. To all that I say, bullsh*t! Journaling is for YOU and you alone, and it’s a thing for a reason. It calms you, it gives you space to feel, it sparks your imagination and your subconscious, and it’s nice to take a few minutes or a few hours to focus only on yourself, your pen, and your paper.
So please, just try one of these prompts. Let me know how it goes :)
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PROMPT 1: MYTHICAL QUESTS
I was meandering through the Anthropology Museum in Mexico City a few weeks ago and marveled at the ingenuity of the stories that the prehistoric societies created to explain things. For example:
“It was thought the Earth was a monster, called tlaltechuhtli, an enormous toad that wandered over the universal water, the dark liquid found in the deepest layers of the universe: it was also thought of as the cipactli, a terrifying animal covered in spines. According to ancient tales, to create the universe Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatilpoca took charge of throwing out this ancient being, making the Earth with its back and the celestial plane with the other half. To complement this act of generation, they made all the fruit necessary for man’s existence pour forth from this god; from its hair: trees, flowers and plants; its skin: fine grass; its eyes: lakes, springs and small caves; finally, the nose: valleys and mountains.”
Prompt: Make up a mythical tale using the full depth of your imagination to explain a phenomenon that you’ve observed but can’t rationalize.
PROMPT 2: ISN’T IT AN EVERYONE THING?
This was the first prompt that kicked off the creative journaling session in LA and I think it was the most thought-provoking. It’s inspired by a story in The Hours Before Dusk—one of Jenna’s friends from Mexico had a grandmother “disappear” into the mountains. He believed his grandmother had disappeared and cut off contact from him on purpose, but in fact she went to die in solitude.
Prompt: Our experiences are uniquely ours, yet we all experience feelings of joy, love, grief, nostalgia. Pick something you don’t like talking about that you’ve lived through, and imagine a friend who knows exactly how you feel. Write them a letter about how you feel about this sore experience, knowing that they completely understand and want to listen.
PROMPT 3: EMOTION AS A PLACE
I co-hosted a creative writing retreat in Marrakech in January and this prompt is inspired by one of the workshops that a writer hosted on surrealist fiction. Imagine an intense emotion: joy, grief, awe, horror. Live in that emotion for a bit—feel how it affects you physiologically, remember the last time you felt it and what caused it, think about the time before that.
Prompt: As you get more and more in touch with the emotion, start to imagine it as a physical place. What does it look like? Is it a room? If so, what’s in the room? Is it a place in nature? Write as many details as you can.
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Happy journaling and an even happier week x