Writing: A Writer's Heart

Journaling

 

Today's Snack: Eat a heart-healthy snack today. How about a crisp apple, a bowl of microwaved veggies, or a chicken sandwich on high-fiber bread? Skim milk is a heart-healthy choice to go with.

 

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Supplies:

Spiral notebook with your favorite color of pen

 

 

A writer's heart is poured out onto the page, if the writer wants it to be. The more you know your own "heart" - understand your feelings and ideas - the better you will be able to express them and interact with your readers, as well as to understand and write about the feelings and ideas of others.

 

If you want to find out what you're thinking, you've got to have a way to transfer your thoughts and feelings to somewhere outside your brain, that's "safe," and doesn't take much time.

 

So write in a journal every day, and gradually, your heart will reveal itself.

 

Journaling is not expensive: all you need is a spiral notebook, and once you fill that, you'll need another one. But that's OK: journaling is much cheaper and better for you than spending your time watching TV, playing video games or listening to music. Plus, you'll have that huge supply of filled-up journals to look back on and re-read some day.

 

The whole idea of a journal is to be totally yourself. You can say whatever you want to say about somebody without worrying that you'll hurt their feelings. They'll never know!

 

You can study your own emotions to find out if you're really TOTALLY mad at someone, as you think you are, or just kind of bugged about something else and taking it out on that person.

 

For a great idea of how journaling can develop world-famous ideas, read the journals in book form of these two famous people: Anne Frank and Charles Darwin.

 

Journaling is a great way to create a writing "inventory," or storehouse, of ideas, phrases, emotions, insights that you can use later on as you write throughout your school career and your adult life.

 

Use your journal to keep track of your life, explore your feelings, review your memories in detail, write an angry letter to someone who hurt you but never send it, mull over your dreams, express excitement over your plans, reveal disappointments and triumphs.

 

Keep random notes, drawings, record people's conversations, remember how you felt, try to record people's accents, list cool-sounding words, and notice and collect neat sounds that you might someday want to use in your writing.

 

Make up a secret code for certain names or places, in case somebody reads your journal!

 

Write about your disappointments. You'll feel better!

 

Expand and develop your sense of humor. Nobody's jokes fall flat when the comic's audience is just one - the comic!

 

You don't have to limit yourself to one journal in which you write everything. You can have one about school, one about your friends, one for travel or vacations, one for your passion such as music, and one to keep at your bedside for bedtime prayers and recording your dreams as soon as you wake up.

 

Tape or glue stuff in: a movie ticket, a postcard, a note, a newspaper or magazine clipping, a picture, even something pretty you found on the ground . . .  and write about it.

 

Record your dreams. Try to remember as many details as you can, and give interpretation a shot, based on what is going on in your life at the same time.

 

You can label your journals, and keep them for years and years. It is really fun to look back on them, and see how your "writer's heart" developed.