In honor of Jack Kerouac’s birthday today, March 12th, here is some good writing advice.

Belief and Technique for Modern Prose by Jack Kerouac

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside your own house
4. Be in love with your life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don’t think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You’re a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

I found this on http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/kerouac-technique.html

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Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us. ~Hal Borland

At the end of each year I have made it a practice to sit down with my journal and reflect back on the previous year. I do this twice-for my personal life and for my art journey/business. Doing this has given me the ability to look back, celebrate my achievements, learn from my mistakes, make adjustments, and look forward to what is ahead. It is always interesting too to try to sum up the year in themes, or by a word. As I wrote I noticed that the two themes that kept popping up were “Acceptance” and “Gratitude”.

What themes come up for you as you look back on 2010?

Another way to tackle this year in review in your journal is to come up with the themes before hand and then look back and find the events that fall under that theme. Make a short list. Or if you are more of a descriptive writer, write little vignettes that illustrate the theme.

a mosaic of 2010 artwork, includes paintings and journals

Over on my art journal blog where I discuss my work as well as chronicle the journey of becoming a working artist, I do a review of my 2010 accomplishments. It’s really been a great tool for me. Here are the categories I use, but feel free to change it!

Learned: This category can be either a workshop or class you took. Or it can be a new technique that you learned. It has always been important for me to keep learning and pushing myself with my artwork.

Shows/Essays/Articles: This is just general highlights or accomplishments of the year.

Produced: This category is an actual number of what I created. It helps me to see the numbers and evaluate what that means.

In less quantifiable terms: This category is broad. Not all accompishments are tangible or can be listed in bullet form. But they are just as important!

The unexamined life is not worth living. ~Socrates

I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life. ~Thoreau

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With summer now in full swing, paintings to be made, journals to be bound, a toddler to chase outside, and blog posts to write I have been finding less time to do my own journaling. For these reasons I am going to be posting journaling tips every other Tuesday. I am working on one about journaling with your Inner Critic. Should be interesting…but just need to find the time!

But I didn’t want to post this week without a prompt at least. With the absence of my own journaling these past few weeks, I have asked myself- Why do I journal anyway? I have missed it. The absence of it is very real for me. I have kept a journal since I was a little girl in various ways and forms. But it was only really, the past 7 years that it became a conscious and consistent habit. But why?

…It is testimony, evidence of a life. My life. It is a learning tool. It is Me.

So here is your journal prompt: Why do you journal?

…writing a journal implies that one has ceased to think of the future and has decided to live in the present. It is an announcement to fate that you expect nothing more. It is assertion that you take each day as it comes and make no connection between to-day and other days. Writing a journal means facing your ocean you are afraid to swim across it, so you attempt to drink it drop by drop. It means that you count the last leaves of a tree whose trunk has lost its sap. ~ George Sand

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Who are you? A simple question for a complex answer. Answering this question in your journal could lead to some interesting writing. For a quick and simple way to start, make a list of roles you lead in your life- I am a… mother, father, sister, daughter, friend, scientist, teacher, etc. Move on to characteristics and attributes- athletic, creative, messy, tall, quiet, funny, dreamer, etc. As your list grows, get creative in naming the different facets of yourself.

Tackling this question in list format is the easiest way to start answering this fundamental question.

visual journal entry, 2004

For the visually inclined:
For the above spread, I simply printed out a self-portrait I painted years ago and blew it up to just show the eyes. I doodled with ink around the image and then journaled my list.

+ Print out a photo of yourself and attach to your journal. Journal around your image.
+ Challenge yourself to draw your portrait in your journal before writing your list. If sketching your whole face is daunting, focus on just your eyes. Eyes are the mirrors into the soul, after all…
+ Write your list out. Print a photo or drawing of yourself onto transparency. Attach the transparency on top of your writing.
+ If you are new to altering your own photographs, I highly recommend Karen Michel’s book The Complete Guide to Altered Imagery : Mixed-Media Techniques for Collage, Altered Books, Artist Journals, and More for great ideas on how to use your photosgraphs in your artwork.

The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change. ~Richard Bach

Looking at yourself with honest eyes can be a courageous thing to do. Growth requires self-examination. Using your journal to explore themes of “you” is a safe place to do so. Journaling has not been called a form of “cheap therapy” for nothing!

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Writing in a journal allows us to stop and reflect. Use your journal as a place to reflect on the things you are grateful for. Often we are overwhelmed by all the obligations we have in our daily lives or what we lack that it is easy to forget what we have. Gratitude for what is in our lives allows us to be present and really savor the good things. Being able to reframe circumstances that we find ourselves in also opens us up to allowing even more positive possibilities. This is not about being unrealistically happy 24 hours a day, it is about fostering a more positive perspective on things.

+ Write a Gratitude List as an entry in your journal. From the big things like a recovery from an illness or getting a new job. To the smallest things such as a genuine smile from a stanger or the extra whip cream in your mocha. When we remember what we have, our lives become more abundant. If this is difficult, start small. You’ll be amazed by all that you have to be grateful for.

+Make writing a Gratitude List a habit. Every time you sit at your journal, begin an entry with a short list of 5 things you are grateful for for that day.

Pink Poppy print available
in the amanobooks art section

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