Category: Journal Writing

Last Week’s Links

What’s Your Type? The Myers-Briggs Test and the Rise of the Personality Quiz

Myers-Briggs offers a model for self-revelation that has endured for decades, thrilling boomers and delighting millennials even as it has perpetually disgusted frustrated psychologists. It helped spawn a booming industry of personality assessments, one that uses the internet and algorithms to hopscotch far beyond the original, hand-scored tests. It inspires an ardent fandom that borders on spiritual, and yet its primary use is decidedly tethered to the material world, as a way to shuffle workers into places where they won’t complain. Its paradoxical appeal, as a woo-woo tool to know the soul and as a convenient, prefab employee sorter for corporations, is both absurd and a little poetic.

This article looks at the new book The Personality Brokers by Merve Emre, which details the origin and persistence of the Myers-Briggs Test.

What Personality Tests Really Deliver

This article also looks at the new book The Personality Brokers by Merve Emre, with an emphasis on the conclusion that personality tests are more self-help than science.

SOLVING THE HIDDEN DISEASE THAT’S AS BAD AS 15 CIGARETTES A DAY

That disease would be loneliness:

Experts agree that we’re facing a loneliness epidemic, one that has profound consequences for our physical health, our longevity and our overall well-being. But where others emphasize the scale and seriousness of this looming crisis, Murthy offers an encouraging message: Yes, loneliness is a pervasive problem worldwide, but there is a simple and actionable solution.

What We Know About Art and the Mind

There are many studies about how we process tonal music and figurative painting, but philosophers are just beginning to understand how our brains react to more abstract work.

The Best Apps for Every Type of Journaling

Usually, when we think about journaling, the old fashioned method of pen and paper comes to mind. But of course, there’s a digital version of every activity now, and there are a ton of great apps and software out there designed to keep your memories in a single place. There are nearly endless options to choose from, so we’ve rounded up the best that are currently available, depending on how you want to use them and what your goals are.

The recommendations here are good, but several links to articles about journal writing make this article even better.

© 2018 by Mary Daniels Brown

Last Week’s Links

The Bullet Journal, Minus the Hype, Is Actually a Really Good Planner

I keep finding articles on use of the bullet journal. This one contains good advice for how to create and adapt a bullet journal for your own needs. There are lots of links here to give you many variations to explore.

Every time I read about the bullet journal, I think of how inconvenient it must be to try to keep all this information in a bound notebook. If I were to try this system out, I’d want to use a disc notebook rather than a bound one. A disc notebook allows for easy removal and rearrangement of pages.

I’ve used Levenger’s Circa notebooks for several years now, and I love them (Disclaimer: I have no affiliate or other relationship with Levenger; I’m just a satisfied customer.) If you do an internet search for a term like discbound notebooks, you’ll find oodles of entries. Here are a few links to check out if you think a discbound notebook would be a good start for a bullet journal:

Anti-Intellectualism and the “Dumbing Down” of America

I first became aware of the lack of critical thinking skills of high school graduates back in 1971, my first year of teaching college composition. I began my first semester with the goal of teaching students how to structure and write convincing essays, but I soon discovered that I needed to take a giant step back and start with teaching students how to evaluate and choose source material for use in their essays. In the 45 years since then I’ve seen this trend grow alarmingly. In this article business leader Ray Williams discusses this :disturbing trend of anti-intellectual elitism in American culture”:

There has been a long tradition of anti-intellectualism in America, unlike most other Western countries. Richard Hofstadter, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his book, Anti-Intellectualism In American Life, describes how the vast underlying foundations of anti-elite, anti-reason and anti-science have been infused into America’s political and social fabric. Famous science fiction writer Isaac Asimov once said: “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

Memory: The Weirdest Ever Fact is Actually True, Study Reveals

Scientists have long known that recalling a particular memory strengthens it. But recent research suggests that “Recalling one memory actually leads to the forgetting of other competing memories.”

As Seattle grows up, views can go away — and take real value with them

Views give us a reference point and connect us to where we are, and to nature, and to each other. They inspire us to get up, get out, get involved. They make that tiny in-city studio, or whatever space we’re currently sharing with 10 similarly rent-challenged roommates, feel bigger, lighter, better.

Sandy Deneau Dunham looks at how the rise of nearby buildings that change our view can have unexpected impact on all aspects of life.

 

© 2016 by Mary Daniels Brown

Articles That Caught My Eye Last Week

The Black Dog: 6 Books to Understand Depression

Jennie Yabroff acknowledges that “‘Depression’ remains a catch-all phrase to describe a variety of conditions ranging from the occasional bad day to paralyzing inertia”:

To truly understand the disease, and not just the treatment, you need to look to writers with sensitivity and compassion about the real nature of the self in despair, be they novelists or doctors, contemporary writers or playwrights dead for hundreds of years.

bell-jarShe recommends these books for help in understanding depression, a state commonly known as the black dog:

  • Ordinarily Well by Peter Kramer
  • The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
  • Darkness Visible by William Styron
  • Hamlet by William Shakespeare
  • The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon
  • An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison
These Instagrammers’ Bullet Journals are organizational masterpieces

The newest craze for keeping oneself organized is the Bullet Journal. Check out this article for examples of bullet journals as well as some links about how the system works.

Why Handwriting Is Still Essential in the Keyboard Age

Despite our current dependence on keyboards, there are some definite cognitive benefits to learning cursive writing.

‘Pronoia’ and other emotions you never knew you had

Here’s an article about Tiffany Watt Smith, a research fellow at the Centre for the History of the Emotions at Queen Mary University of London:

[It’s] the subjective experience of emotions — that Smith explores in her charming new book, The Book of Human Emotions. It’s a roundup of 154 words from around the world that you could call an exploration of “emotional granularity,” as it provides language for some very specific emotions you likely never knew you had. “It’s a long-held idea that if you put a name to a feeling, it can help that feeling become less overwhelming,” she said. “All sorts of stuff that’s swirling around and feeling painful can start to feel a bit more manageable,” once you’ve pinned the feeling down and named it.

Doctors Say Your Word Choice Can Hugely Change Your Brain

Every word counts:

Be careful because the next word you say could determine how your day is, or the rest of your life might pan out. Doctors at Thomas Jefferson University explained that the choice of our words could actually have more impact on our lives than we actually think.

© 2016 by Mary Daniels Brown

Books That I Finished in February

In an effort to reach my reading goal of 40 books this year, I’m going to start keeping track here of the books I finish each month. Although I keep this information in a database program, it will be easier for me to see if I make each month’s quota.

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
Recommended

lucy bartonMany years later, first-person narrator Lucy Barton recalls the time her mother visited her in the hospital. Lucy spent nine weeks hospitalized after an appendectomy because of a fever the doctor couldn’t figure out and couldn’t eliminate. Up until that time Lucy had had little contact with her mother since leaving home as a young woman.

Her mother stays for five days, during which the two women gossip about the lives of several people in Lucy’s small, rural hometown. These stories provide a round-about way of discussing what life is all about and how people treat each other. Lucy never does confront her mother with the question she most needs an answer to—why her mother allowed some unspecified “thing” (suggestions of physical and/or sexual abuse)—happen. Yet before her mother unceremoniously leaves to return home, Lucy has come to terms with the insatiable desire for a mother’s love and the fragile nature of memory.

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
Highly Recommended

house-of-mirthThis was the February selection of my in-person classics book club. Published in 1905, it was Wharton’s first novel. It portrays New York high-society life at the turn of the twentieth century.

The novel tells the story of beautiful Lily Bart. At age 29, 11 years after she made her debut into society, Lily is well past the time when she should have found a suitable, meaning rich, husband. Born into society but forced to its margins by her father’s financial ruin, Lily must find a husband to provide the dresses, jewels, houses, prestige, and power she needs to maintain her place in society.

A life outside of the social circuit is something Lily cannot even consider. As her finances dwindle, so do her opportunities and her reputation. This novel deftly portrays the lives of people for whom appearance is everything, and the fate of people, like Lily, who are unable to play the game successfully.

Writing Down Your Soul by Janet Connor

writing down your soulAnyone interested in journal writing will appreciate Janet Connor’s story of how, at the darkest point of her life, she discovered a way to tap into her own inner strength through writing.

Although her practice involves writing in a journal, she insists that it differs from standard journal writing because of these four characteristics: intention, purpose, process, and commitment. Connor mines the scientific literature of mind-body medicine to explain how writing that combines these four elements can put us in touch with our own inner wisdom by shifting our consciousness and realigning the brain’s neural pathways. She then lays out a four-step approach for accessing that wisdom.

I felt that the book contained much repetition and padding. Nonetheless, it does offer detailed instructions—even though perhaps, in places, too detailed—for anyone interested in giving Connor’s system a try.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Highly Recommended

a-little-lifeThis big-hearted book contains so much humanity that I’m going to be thinking about it for a while before attempting to write a review. It’s one of the most affecting books I’ve ever read. As much as I love literature, I can’t remember the last time a book actually brought me to tears.

If you’re going to read only one novel this year, make it this one. It’s long at 800+ pages, but spend the time to read it slowly and savor it.

Slow Reading by John Miedema

slow readingMiedema put this book together from research for a graduate course in library and information science. He defines slow reading as a voluntary practice done to increase enjoyment and comprehension of a text, a process that some people describe as “getting lost in a book.”

Miedema is discussing the reading of fiction here. Here are a few quotations:

“A fictional work provides a sand box for imagining other identities and choices”(p. 56).

“Children can use fiction as a testing ground for their future selves. Is there any reason to stop this process when we reach adulthood? It is sad and a bit creepy to watch those adults who cease to imagine. It is as if their inner landscape is withering” (p. 57).

”Slow readers have a particular capacity to open up to new ideas, and allow the sense of self to be transformed” (p. 62).

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Year-to date total of books read: 7

© 2016 by Mary Daniels Brown

When a Journal Becomes a Legacy

Journal writing is one of the many topics I write about often. I use my own journals as a way to figure out what I think, feel, believe, dream about, or anguish over. I write for myself, with no thought of having someone else read these uncensored thoughts.

But I have a secret dream: that I find, in an old trunk somewhere, a pile of journals left behind by someone who died long ago. Reading those old journals, I would get to know the person who wrote them.

And even though my mother is still alive, I have especially imagined finding and reading her writings from the time when she was an 18-year-old bride marrying her sailor returned safely from World War II. What were her dreams and aspirations? And when did the fairy tale sour, the marriage begin to crumble? Was she ever aware of her ambivalence toward me, the baby whose birth she insists was so wanted and anxiously awaited after the stillbirth of the first child 14 months earlier?

There is no stash of journals written by my mother, but I still fantasize about finding someone’s—anyone’s—journals. They would be a window into somebody’s consciousness, into a particular life lived in a particular time in a particular place.

That must be why I’m so drawn into stories in which other people describe finding those journals. Here are three examples of how a journal can become a legacy.

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In Love, Mom: Journals Left By My Mother alto, whose real name is Allan, provides an excerpt from a journal his mother left for him when she died of brain cancer at age 78 in September 2010. The long passage he transcribes is one of the last entries in the journal she left him.

I am publishing this to demonstrate that people are more than their histories. My mother was an example of someone who did not let a painful childhood completely define who she was and how she would parent. She overcame her history to be a mother that, in my estimation, defined the term.

In this passage his mother explains to him, the grown man, that in reading over her earlier journals, “when you come across the entry that refers to August 17, 1973, the day your grandfather died, I need you to know that your mother is telling you a complete fabrication, a very well executed and intentional lie.”

She explains that she told him the lie when he was younger to avoid confusing him and burdening him with the reality of her own relationship with her father, Allan’s grandfather, whom she calls evil. But at the end of her life, she wishes to correct this family secret, the lie told to protect the child and probably herself as well, the lie that allowed her to avoid explaining and processing her own complex and, probably, shameful feelings.

All of the journals she left her son are her legacy, but most especially the final one in which she insists on telling the truth to the son who is no longer a child.

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Over at transcribing memory a blogger (I haven’t been able to find her name) is transcribing the journals of her husband’s 97-year-old grandmother, Babu.

Unnamed Blogger (UB) is just beginning the transcribing process with the oldest volume they have, from 1935, the year Babu turned 17. UB types up the journal entries, then prints them out in a large font for Babu to read over. UB then talks with her and asks for more information about the people and events recorded in the annual diaries.

Of the hand-written journals UB writes:

I turn every page eagerly yet extremely cautiously, looking for what happens next. The cover has a tendency to shed tiny painful black flecks whenever handled in anything but a tender way. The blue bleeding ink, written in cursive, is consistent for as many pages as I had read or peaked ahead to and it is not always easy to decipher. I widen my eyes and look closer searching for answers to questions: Did she finish her story and what did her teacher think of it? Did she get a part in the senior play? Will anything ever happen between her and D? In fact, has something already happened?

Later UB writes about the universality of the experiences she’s finding in the journals:

She [Babu] is allowed to write a short story as her theme in English and she signs up for auditions to the school play. How hilarious, I was probably doing exactly the same things during the last few months of my sixteenth year. The two of us have more in common than either of us thought. Or maybe this is always just life, no matter who or when.

The value of this journal transcription project lies not only in Babu’s memories from her teenage years, but also in UB’s ability to respond and relate to what she’s reading and learning. Although they’ve just begun this project, I look forward to following new entries. These journals and Babu’s ability to discuss them with UB are a legacy for her family and for anyone else interested in what life was like at that time.

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red leather diaryKoppel, Lily. The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal

Most apartment buildings in New York City allot residents a wire-enclosed storage space in the basement. These storage spaces are often not emptied when residents move out, and some accumulate stuff for years. One day, when unclaimed things had been put out on the sidewalk to be hauled away, Lily Koppel saw and rescued a red leather diary with a brass lock.

Inside the diary Koppel found entries for every day between 1929 and 1934:

Opening the tarnished brass lock, Koppel embarks on a journey into the past, traveling to a New York in which women of privilege meet for tea at Schrafft’s, dance at the Hotel Pennsylvania, and toast the night at El Morocco. As she turns the diary’s brittle pages, Koppel is captivated by the headstrong young woman whose intimate thoughts and emotions fill the pale blue lines. Who was this lovely ingénue who adored the works of Baudelaire and Jane Austen, who was sexually curious beyond her years, who traveled to Rome, Paris, and London?

—Source: Goodreads

Koppel manages to track down the diary’s owner, Florence, then a 90-year-old woman living in Florida with her husband of 67 years. In her book Koppel combines the diary entries with information from interviews with Florence to create a picture of upper-class life in New York City in the 1930s.

My library book group back in St. Louis read this book a few years ago, and everyone was fascinated. Through her diligence and effort Koppel has turned an almost-lost journal into a legacy for anyone interested in history.

End of 30-Day Digital Journaling Challenge

Related Posts:

In my Midway Check-In for the 30-Day Digital Journaling Challenge, I reported that I was going to try digital journaling at home, first thing in the morning, then continue to journal by hand later when I got to the office.

30-day-challenge-682x1024One question I wanted to look at was whether the early digital journaling would prevent me from having anything to write by hand about a while later. I’m pleased to report that it did not. Many days I didn’t write as much by hand as I often do when not journaling digitally, but I still had more to write about when I had started by typing earlier. Usually what I wrote about by hand was some kind of amplification of what I had typed.

Another question I’ve been thinking about during this whole month-long challenge is whether the input method (typing vs. writing) would make a difference in my journaling. When I focused on journaling digitally for the last 15 days, I initially found that working on the computer made a big difference. When typing, it’s too easy to constantly use the backspace or delete key and correct typing mistakes rather than continuing to write uncensored and unedited. Also, since most of my daily work involves writing, which I do on the computer, journaling looked and felt too much like a work project, which needed to be edited and polished, rather than a spontaneous outpouring of my unconscious mind.

But early on in this second-half experiment, I tried closing my eyes when I typed. I originally tried this approach as a way to avoid constantly editing and correcting, but I soon discovered that it freed up my writing in other ways as well. Closing eyes causes the brain to transition into producing alpha waves, a state of relaxation similar to meditation and that dreamy feeling between wakefulness and sleep. The alpha state forms a bridge between the conscious and the unconscious, thereby tapping into our creativity and intuition. Poised on that bridge is where we do our most penetrating and revealing journal work.

As I result of my experiences during this challenge, I have concluded that digital and hand-written journaling are not mutually exclusive but rather complementary. This is something I will continue to experiment with on my own.

I’d like to thank all the sponsors, organizers, and participants for making this challenge so meaningful to me. As I concluded in my midway check-in post:

I want to thank all the challenge participants for being willing to share their experiences with each other. That has certainly been the most important result of my experiment with the 30-Day Digital Journaling Challenge.

© 2014 by Mary Daniels Brown

Journal Writing Resources

8 ways a simple notebook can change your life

A lot of research shows your brain sees writing differently than thinking or talking.

Writing forces you to organize and clarify your thoughts. You learn better when you write things down and are more likely to follow through.

So what should you be writing in this notebook?

Eric Barker has eight answers to this question, along with references to some scientific research to back up his claims.

How to Keep a Journal – Two Methods You Should Try

Lawyer and entrepreneur Marelisa Fabrega explains these two methods:

  1. Proprioceptive writing, originally espoused by Linda Trichter Metcalf in 1976 and updated by Metcalf and Tobin Simon in their 2002 book Writing the Mind Alive: The Proprioceptive Method for Finding Your Authentic Voice.
  2. Morning pages, a concept discussed by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way.

Appeal of Writing Memoirs Grows, as Do Publishing Options

All right, this article is technically not about journal writing. It’s about writing memoir. But a journal or diary can often be the source for the material necessary to craft a compelling memoir:

“It’s the age of memoirs,” Ms. Salinger said, as self-publishing has made it easier and more accessible to plumb an individual’s past and share it widely. And many do so because they believe memoir writing is therapeutic and revelatory.

The article has information on classes, offered both online and in person at writing centers, adult education programs, and bookstores. It also touches on publication options, whether for commercial success or for smaller distribution to family and friends.

You won’t find here everything you’ll need to get started on memoir writing, but you will find some good starting points, particularly encouragement.

Writing Resources

The Writer: Advice and Inspiration for today’s writer

The Writer is not only the oldest continuously published magazine for authors in the country, it is also one of the oldest continuously published magazines in America, period. First established in April 1887, the periodical has seen the comings and goings of editors and staff, slogans and themes. It has won the Folio magazine Editorial Excellence Award nine times. Although full content is only available to subscribers, there is plenty on the web page for the rest of us. From the homepage, click on Articles. From there, browse by Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Freelance Writing, and half a dozen other freely accessible topics. There are also loads of Writing Resources and Writing Prompts that are free, open, and available to any writer.

From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994–2014. https://www.scout.wisc.edu

I’ve been researching writing prompts lately, so I checked out those on The Writer. My random look at three of the five pages given suggests that these prompts are geared toward fiction rather than nonfiction writers. But if you’re writing fiction, they look pretty good. There’s an emphasis on creating characters, imagining plot situations, and experimenting with different points of view.

5 Writing Tips: Jane Smiley

Lots of writers and writing instructors offer advice on specific aspects of writing or editing. But I like this list from Jane Smiley precisely because it’s more general. Her advice—or encouragement, really—describes building a writing life, or a writer’s mindset.

30-Day Digital Journaling Challenge Begins Today!

Related Post:

I’m excited to begin the 30-Day Digital Journaling Challenge today.

Since the essence of the challenge is on digital (rather than writing with pen on paper) journaling, much of the discussion on the web site and the Facebook page has been about what apps and programs people use.

30-day-challenge-682x1024One of the most frequent questions has been about the need for a separate journaling program. Many people say they’re planning to use a word processing (e.g., Microsoft Word) document for their digital journaling and divide the document into separate entries with headings. A lot of writers I know use another program, Scrivener, for their writing projects. Although I have not done this myself, I can see how Scrivener could be easily adapted for digital journaling. You could have a top-level folder for the year, with a subfolder for each month. Each monthly subfolder would then contain separate documents for each dated entry. Scrivener allows users to assign key words and to color code sections, which would make organization and retrieval of specific material fairly easy. (Scrivener was originally developed for Macs, but there is now a Windows version available.)

For my digital journaling, I have used a journaling program, MacJournal by Mariner Software, for several years. (This is a Mac-only program.) I like it for a lot of reasons:

  • You can protect your journal with a password
  • You can create different journals for different purposes
  • You can create new journals and new entries easily
  • You can format text with different fonts and colors
  • You can create categories of entries and color code them
  • You can assign key words to entries
  • You can add images, even videos, to entries

MacJournal undoubtedly has more features than these, but these are the ones I use consistently.

Some people like to keep separate journals for different purposes—a dream journal, a gratitude journal, a gardening journal, a wine journal. With MacJournal you can do that. But I like to throw everything into one journal, then pull out what I need when I need it. With MacJournal I can do this. I like, for example, that I can color code entries—purple for dreams, red for health—and then easily isolate only those entries when I want to look at them.

I will be using MacJournal for the 30-Day Digital Journaling Challenge. I’m looking forward to hearing from other participants what program or approach they use and how they like it.

Disclaimer:

I have no financial interest in any of the programs mentioned here. I purchased my copies of Microsoft Word, Scrivener, and MacJournal.

30-Day Digital Journaling Challenge

I’m a dedicated journal writer. I do most of my journaling by hand, with a purple fountain pen and purple ink, in a paper journal, also usually purple. I have, however, sometimes used an electronic journal program on my desktop computer. (A lot of people write, including journalling, on their smartphones, but I’m no good at rapid one-finger or two-thumb typing. I need a full-size keyboard for anything longer than a tweet or short Facebook update.)

30-day-challenge-682x1024But I was intrigued when I saw the 30-Day Digital Journaling Challenge. To supplement the web site, there’s also a Facebook group.

I don’t even remember where I first came across the 30-Day Digital Journaling Challenge, but it didn’t take me long to decide to sign up. The purpose of the challenge is to get people to commit to writing in an electronic journal every day for the month of October. I haven’t used my computer journal in quite some time, and I thought this challenge would get me back into using it more regularly.

I’m hoping to approach this project with enough of an open mind to see how typing into a computer journal compares with writing by hand in a paper journal. I’m looking forward to the experiment and look forward to discovering how it will turn out.

Why not join me and sign up for the 30-Day Digital Journaling Challenge yourself?