J is for...journaling!

In keeping with yesterday's theme, I thought I'd use today's letter to expand on how I go about writing the journaling for my layouts.  I've been told that journaling is my strong suit, and I'm glad that it is.  When I look back on layouts from years ago that I've done, I'm immediately drawn to the story. I often write in great detail about the event, location, emotions and activities portrayed by the pictures.  I love being able to capture these details that I would surely forget in a few weeks, months or years.  Even my girls love to read  about when they went somewhere, what they saw, how they reacted, what they felt.  They may not remember actually being there, but they have a chance to relive it by reading the scrapbook.  Writing comes easily for me because I enjoy it.  I often write in a stream of consciousness format.  This means I don't edit what I'm writing and that I might not even have full sentences...but I DO HAVE DETAILS.  I focus on what I would tell a good friend if I were sitting with here going over the pictures.  I write about how something smelled, or about how it felt to do whatever it was that I was doing.  I focus on the senses and on the emotion, and that comes across in my writing.

Of course, not every layout is a novel (although my friends would beg to differ), but I make sure to write about things that matter.  Well, that matter to me, anyway.  I enjoy writing about things that will make me smile when I look back on them in the future.  Things that maybe will tell the next generation a little something about my life here and now.  About how our family spent its days, about things that we cared about.  Sometimes, the "what, where & when" aren't as important as the how and why.  When I'm having a difficult time getting words down on paper, I sometimes take a different approach to writing.  I've used interviews, bullet style lists, captions and even blog entries (imagine THAT!) to fill in for my journaling when I can.  Here are a few examples of layouts I've done using alternate styles of journaling...capturing a little of the everyday that matters to us...and one layout that really could stand in for a novel :-)

use of a bulleted list:

screenshot of my inbox:

captions and small phrases that capture what we're up to:

questionnaire:

and for the mother-load of all journaling...

Hope you find your voice and become more comfortable every day getting your thoughts, feelings and life down on paper (or up on a blog)! Happy writing.