Sit comfortably with your journal (pen to page … a keyboard won't work for this exercise).
• Gaze at your object for several minutes. Without looking down at your journal, and breathing gently and easily, let your pen wander over a clean page, moving in synch with what you are seeing.
• After a bit, let your eyes drift down to the page and continue letting the pen do whatever it wishes.
• Then slowly let the pen form words in a combination of doodling and writing, shaping the letters melodramatically, impulsively, letting their form embody their meaning.
• Continuing, open to more words, phrases, and sentences, writing as fast as you can to catch them all. Let the outpouring build to a climax and recede and build again. Let the nonsensical connections play.
• Keep going until you find the core of this moment of writing.
All writers of every kind have one overarching ambition: to find and articulate the core of their writing. This aim is seldom achieved, but that makes it no less worthy. Writing's ability to pinpoint meaning gives it awesome power.
In journaling, because your subject is ultimately your own life and awareness, finding the core of your writings at any given sitting can be tough. It's easy to be distracted or simply not know how to get down to your core impulses right this minute.
This journaling drill is directed at getting you there quickly.
So fix on something in your environment and let it move your pen. Very slowly introduce conscious thought to the pen's movement, seeking a synthesis between hand and mind. Persist, boldly, audaciously, like a warrior on a quest, until suddenly out pops the core message, the gift that journaling has for you today.
Maybe the core of today's entry is finally facing an issue you've been avoiding. Or celebrating your successes because you've been far too self-critical lately. Or is it realizing how lonely you feel? Is it renewed commitment to serving another? Or a memory you had long forgotten?
When you find it, write the core sentence(s) and put your pen down. Look at what you wrote, ponder it, close the notebook. You're done for now. You won't forget and tomorrow you'll go from here.
Do this drill if you're out-of-sorts, feeling foggy or listless, or just unfocused for whatever reason. It's an excellent way to get back on track!
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I know that doodling or letting a pen wander freely may be very difficult for some readers. Is it for you?
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Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/quinnanya/4135380196/