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"Tales of the Monocacee" |
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"The Journaling Class" There were seven children in the class. The writers' center had promised him ten. Ooh well. It won't pay the rent, he thought, but it'll buy the beans. "Good afternoon, kids. This is a class on journaling for writers, and I'm teaching it, but I'm not a teacher. My name is Jerry Strickland, I expect to be called Jerry, and I'm a not-yet-famous, still unpublished writer. If you really want to be a writer, and you work long and hard at your craft, in fifteen years you may be lucky enough to attain my exalted position. For now, you're lucky enough to learn at the feet of a master." He looked around the room. Bright, happy, absorbent faces, every one of them around twelve, four females, (and two moms,) all putty in his hands. He couldn't ask for better, tho' he still could for more, just because he worked best with ten or twelve bodies in front of him. Ooh well. Not even he could tell the difference between best and good enough when he was teaching. "Journaling is the meat in a writer's life. Publication is the potatoes. What do I mean by that? I mean that every writer writes about him (or her) self and his life, and the more notes you can refer to, the more accurate your writing. "Let me tell you a story about that. Back a few hundred years ago, this guy wrote his memoirs. He had written other books, but they had all been privately published, so, although he was known as an excellent writer, he wasn't well known. "When his memoirs were published, they were immediately attacked as fiction parading as fact. This guy claimed to have broken out of a prison that had been is use for more than 600 years and was known to be absolutely escape-proof. He claimed to have been courier for kings and courts throughout Europe, privy to secrets of royal families and advisor to the rich and famous. "Everybody knew he had to be lying, and they set out, en masse, to prove their point. Nobody was going to pawn off a story as incredible as his as fact, especially one that named names and dates with abandon. "But the man had journaled! For fifty years they struggled to disprove him, and in the end found they had the most accurate history of 18th century Europe ever written. "You can do that. The rules of journaling are simple and easy to follow, and, the act of journaling has a side benefit that is an absolute necessity if you want to be a writer. It teaches you how to write. "Writing is a skill, like riding a bike or tying your shoelaces. Writing is also an art, like painting and music, so, like painting and music, you must develop the skill in order to realize the art. "Journaling does that. Journaling gives you daily practice in the skill of writing, whether it gives you practice in the art of writing or not. A 'laundry list' of what you did that day gives you practice in the shaping of letters, the forming of phrases, and the developing of thoughts. Anytime you write, every time you write, you are practicing those three skills. "The reason you develop these skills, the reason you practice every day, is the same reason you practice bicycling. Remember the first time you got on a bicycle? It took all of your concentration to keep from falling over. It took all the muscles in your arms to maintain some slight semblance of steadiness in the handlebars, and pushing down on the pedal each time threw you so far to that side you were certain the act would dump you to the ground. But you persevered. Soon you didn't have to concentrate on your balance. It just happened. Your shoulders, then your arms relaxed and your hands held the handlebars steady all by themselves. Pedaling became a fluid act of propulsion that you could change without thought. In short, you mastered the skill of bicycling. Now you could jump on a bike and go somewhere, watching where you were going and what was going on around you while your body, all on it's own, propelled the machine. "Some of you may have gone on to the art of bicycling, riding no hands, steering by shifting weight, jumping curbs and obstructions, keeping one wheel up, while others were happy to effortlessly move across the ground while your mind was observing the world around you. That's what practice gives you. Once a skill is yours to command, it becomes a tool for the artist within you. "Writing takes more practice than bicycling. Writing takes more practice than any other physical skill. To form the word 'the' takes nine fluid changes of direction within the vertical space of half an inch and the horizontal space of three quarters, with one abrupt reversal and accuracy measured in 64ths. To be a writer that has to happen thousands of times a day, without your 'awareness', although just as it's fun to watch yourself rocketing along on a bicycle, it's a joy sometimes to watch the words appear on paper. "Journals help you reach that point. Just as it would take you forever to learn to bicycle with two minutes of practice once a year, writing a little bit, once in a while will only lead to frustration. A journal, with a hundred words of whatever every day, will give you that skill in a year or two. Throw dates on it with regularity, and it becomes a reference tool to boot. "Any questions?" A mother, there because the trip to and from was too long, timidly raised a hand. "Who was it that wrote their memoirs? I studied history in high school and college and never heard of a supremely accurate history of Europe." "I'm not surprised. Circumstances have kept it so far from the public it's as if it were kept secret. He died in 1798, but his memoirs weren't published for more than thirty years after that. When they were published, they spent fifty years or so in the limbo of academic renunciation. By the time of his vindication the world was in the throes of the Victorian era, a time of insane sexual repression much like today's which drove everyone to sexual titillation in any way possible. "His memoirs consisted of six thick volumes of work. In their concern for profit publishers reduced them to one, or occasionally two volumes, leaving out all but what they thought would sell quickly, and the myth of Casanova the lover began. Giovanni Giocomo Casanova de Seingalt wrote brilliantly on subjects ranging from poetry to theology, and his memoirs are an excellent 'slice of life' of Europe in the 1700's, yet we only know of him as a lover. "Back to journaling. I've found that, in these last years of the twentieth century, with word processors everywhere, the best tools for journaling, and writing for that matter, are a spiral notebook and an ink pen. It's almost impossible to imagine a situation where they wouldn't be available at a moment's notice, and the ease with which words appear on the page, flowing friction free from a river of ink, begets joy like a well-tuned racing bike. "At the end of it all, journaling, a page a day, will have you riding joyously and with great ease through your mind as you look forward to reading what your hand is writing. "If there are no further questions, go out, get your tools, and begin journaling." A hand shot up. "Yes?" "What do you mean when you say ink pen? Is a roller ball an ink pen?" "Thank you," he said, although the word 'damn' went through his mind. He'd hoped they'd take him at his word and let him leave early. This first lecture always inspired him and he was ready to go to work. But, 'a job's a job', he thought. "When I say ink pen, I'm being very specific. A roller ball will do, a ballpoint, a pencil, on a desert island with nothing else a stick and a sandy beach will work, but they all have their limitations. Nothing works as well as a nib, (or point,) that will pick up ink from a reservoir, and allow you to transfer it to paper. Even a fountain pen, an ink pen with it's own reservoir, has the drawback of needing your attention when the reservoir goes empty. They're great for their portability, but at the writer's desk I've found an empty fountain pen and an inkwell to be the least distracting of all. I get almost a page of writing per dip, and I barely have to look to fill it. There are few things worse to a writer than to run out of ink in the middle of a thought when ink isn't immediately at hand. "Does that answer your question?" 'Say yes,' he thought, 'and don't ask another. I've got work to do.' Her head nodded up & down, and he smiled. "That's it then," he said, "and only write on one side of the page. Paper's so inexpensive, and so thin nowadays, that it's not worth the savings. "Bring your journals next week, with seven pages in them, and we'll review and discuss." He left the room, and the writer's center, in a hurry, hoping he could hold on to his inspiration until he reached his desk. :::::::::::: © John C. Hagerhorst |
