JOURNALING LIFE

Whenever an artist friend shares her journal with me, I am awed at the slips and slices of creativity captured inside. As a writer, I routinely force my fictional characters to keep journals so I can spy on them and share their secrets with my readers. 

But do I personally keep a bound journal?  Nope. 

Yet this was one of Lin Oliver’s pieces of advice for writers in her keynote speech at the SCBWI Spring conference this April. 

For many writers, blogging has become a way to journal our lives as creative people; to engage with the world; to enjoy the process and share that joy with others. The word blog is a shortened version of the original phrase: web log. A blog is a log—or journal—you keep on the web. And share with the world. 

In the movie Contagion, Jude Law asserts that he is a writer. Elliott Gould’s character responds, “Blogging is just graffiti with punctuation.” 

Ouch. Unfortunately it’s sometimes true. Even for moi.  

Then again, not everything you write in a bound journal will be the stuff of great literature either. It’s not meant to be. We journal partly for our own purposes of finding ourselves and partly to explore ways to share our findings with the world. 

Do you keep a journal? Do you blog? How do you journal your creative life and share your joy with others?

PRAYER: Heavenly Father, thank you for this life and for the creativity you gifted us with. Help us find ways to explore the gifts you’ve honored us with. Show us ways to share your love and glory with others today. Amen.

WHAT ABOUT YOU? Do you keep a journal?

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This article recently ran in an issue of our Northern California regional newsletter for the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators (SCBWI).

CELEBRATE YOUR WEIRDNESS

The theme for the ChristianWriters.com blog chain this month is “celebrate.” Please click on the links in the right hand column to see what my friends have to say about our theme.

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Lin Oliver’s keynote speech at the Spring SCBWI conference was filled with gems. Many were things we’ve heard before. But some took me from “duh” to “aha!”

Her writing tip from Bruce Coville was one of those: Follow your weirdness.

For me, weirdness speaks to the use of humor. I never advanced past 4^th grade humor. Weird. I love most to write for middle grade readers and throw as much weird humor their way as I can.  

But weirdness is not limited to humor. An unknown world filled with dragons, house elves and pus-filled tubor plants? Weird.  

Vampires that drink animal blood instead of human blood? Weird. 

A talking donkey who can’t keep his tail pinned to his bum? Weird. 

But wonderful. And delightful to children. 

Lin’s point spoke to me about fear. We are creative. We do come up with unconventional ideas. But some of us corral our muse and tie her to the railroad tracks. As a result, instead of peanut-popping puffer fish, our stories end up with pink-eyed bunnies who only get mad enough to occasionally raise the dust when they stamp their dainty foot.  

Now if those bunnies’ eyes turned green and the dust was actually smoke because of the flames shooting out of their fluffy white tails, and spoke only in haiku, we’d have a weird, but creative and unconventional character. 

What’s the worst that could happen if you embraced your weirdness and wrote a story that was weirder than weird? You’d have a whole bunch of words you might not use.  

Or you might have a story that would delight children.

PRAYER: Heavenly Father, thank you for making us just the way we are. Thank you for the creativity you have gifted us with. Please show us ways today to celebrate and use our creativity to glorify you. Amen.

WHAT ABOUT YOU? How do you celebrate your weirdness?

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This article recently ran in the Northern California regional newsletter for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI).