Journaling Prompts & Other Reflections #6
Exercises to engage your creativity and access those pesky inner thoughts
Another round of prompts to journal toward. Let me know if you use any of these and if they are helpful or interesting in your own creative processes.
Obfuscate things a little. Put your name into this tool. Find a new word from the togetherness of your letters. Find the three words that come before or after this new word in the dictionary. Start writing. Use each of these seven total words in every paragraph. Try to write seven paragraphs.
Every day for a week, try writing a single word in a journal after each meal you have. I trust you to constitute what a meal is. This word can be whatever is or has been in your mind that moment, something inspired based on what you ate, your immediate perception or intuitive sense after eating. As you finish, clear out an hour or two to settle into what your unconscious has tried to sculpt together. Close your eyes and write all of the words on a new paper. With your eyes still closed, draw a single line curving how you want, as long as it feels right. What are the connections? What are the shapes? Tell yourself: what have you been sensing beyond the veil of your sight?
I am struck by this work — Marie-Noëlle Agniau’s The Escapades tr. by Jesse Hover Amar. I like a string of poems that are connected by a title and a consecutive number and something of continued images or continued intents, but little else. This poem in particular I was struck by the line, “It’s as if every beast in / creation were waging war on hope.” Take the bases here — every beast - in creation - waging war - on hope. Play around with the nouns here. First take the things immediately around you, visible or sensible. Then try things on your mind. For me It’s as if every coffee in the vase were waging snowglobes on artificial flowers. I think there’s a magic to transfiguring lines to your own circumstances merely by exchanging nouns. Try this exercise with as many variants as feels right. Expand it to be random words in dictionaries. Ask your friends to text you a noun. Open up maps and go to some random point to take street names or locations. It’s as if every love padlock in amnesia were waging the pawn shop on strollers. Sometimes things fall into place. Sometimes you wedge enough into a structure that you can tell when something’s right and something isn’t. Listen to your intuition.
Animal, person, structure, or abstract - what do you think would be the most intense eye contact you could fathom currently? Tell the story of what this vision would unlock within you if you could maintain it for a second, a minute, ten minutes, an hour.
What’s the oldest book you can remember reading? You can interpret this question as in the first book you have a memory reading, or as in the literal oldest piece of literature you’ve set your peepers on. If you can, find these works - in-person or online - and jot down the first and last lines. Reflect on these capstone sentences as the entry for much of your readerly intent. Try to write a page on it and what these mean to you.
I hope these find you in some state of reflection and capacity!
Love always darlings!