Journaling with Multiple Personalities

William Boyd's narrator comments in the novel, Any Human Heart, "We keep a journal to entrap that collection of selves that forms us, the individual human being."  Later he questions, "Are there aspects of our lives - things we do, feel and think - that we daren't confess, even to ourselves, even in the privacy of our private record?"

Do you become bored or fearful when writing journal entries that delve into delicate issues?  Why not take advantage of imagination and fabricate experiences?

Benefit as a writer and problem solver by playing games from a personal kaleidoscope:  a me, myself, and I. While journaling, let the three selves jostle for attention, rotate and revolve.
Write in and out of reality.

Give names to three facets of self and nurture the multiple personalities with potential for characters.  Consider changing names daily to discover and delight in the nuances. What if you included names of favorite book characters?   Choose animals, plants and birds to push boundaries.

Boyd writes, "Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary. It is the respective properties of those two categories that make that  life appear interesting or humdrum."

Move way beyond serious and enjoy the potential.

Creative Write: Gain insights into issues and develop characters. What would the three faces of you comment about if you spoke as a parrot, an osprey and a whistling duck?

Weave a Nature Essay

A woven essay combines three styles of writing on a common theme. A pause separates each style with enough blank space to give the reader time to absorb the writing.

For example, a focus on nature might begin with two friends discussing an environmental issue. After a pause the writing moves to an interview with a naturalist or comments on a quotation from a nature writer.

After another pause a poem reveals an emotional aspect of nature. Following more white space, the essay concludes with a personal reflection on the subject. The reader gains information about the subject with each strand of the weave.

Show your passion for an environmental issue.

Select three different styles of writing. Choose: journal entries, a poem, fable, personal narrative, dialogue, or anecdotes.

Approach the subject by using three writings in sequence with paragraph breaks.  

End with power and comments that will stay with the reader.

Writing with Bubbles at the Car Wash

Avoid the obvious when writing about nature, sky or the color of the sea. Search beyond azure or baby blue to pique the reader's curiosity. Use color to describe experience and stimuate readers' imaginations.  Cliches such as "green as grass" or "emerald green"  do not evoke a unique view. Take out other colored pencils to write your scenes.

Create a mood, reveal a point of view with color.  John Updike describes the sad ambiance of a street with "old asphalt sidings the tint of bruise and dung."

Discover visual imagery to fit the style and tone of your writing.  Search for offbeat but recognizable items to stand for colors and more.

If you're waiting in a lounge during your car's oil change, look around.  Notice the objects, upholstery, arrangement of chairs and food.  Then search the items in the service bays.  Later when you describe boredom, bring these images into the scene. Let the taste of waiting room coffee add discomfort.

What do you notice when driving through the bubbles at a car wash? Keep track of the collage of color to use in writing.

Sandra Cisneros colors the world of her novel, Carmelo, through the senses of its Mexican characters.  A church is the "color of flan."  A woman becomes a "fried tortilla color."  She writes of shawls black as Cototepec pottery, like the huitlacochea corn mushroom or fresh-cooked black beans.  She adds flavor and texture with color and metaphor.

Instead of using colors to describe emotions such as unhappiness connected to blue, consider a color of delight.

Look into white for texture, shapes and ideas. Do you find laughter in the rose?

Barry Lopez uses rainbow tints to described pottery such as raucous purple. coy yellow, belligerent red and ardent white.  Search the thesaurus for fresh ideas.  Then you can avoid using fire-engine red or white pearl.

Creative Write:

1. Describe the sea and sky during a storm without using blue, gray or green.  Be creative and fresh with color choices.
2.  Show an angry man in colors to reflect his emotions.