Get a boost to your journaling: Be inspired by author Roger Housden

You probably know the feeling of losing steam on your journal writing and in need of a boost.

I've been there many a time myself. I know how good it feels to write and how soothing and enlightening it can be, but when I'm in the thick of a busy life, journaling is one of the activities I may drop.

With journaling there are no deadlines looming. There is no other one depending on me to get even five minutes of writing done. I have no external consequences--the sword of Damocles hanging overhead--if I don't write in my journal for a week, or even for a month or more.

There may be no hunger pangs or feeling thirsty that alert me that I haven't written in my journal, but I may feel a small steady, almost imperceptible leak of energy. It's subtle, but you are in need of a boost of power.

That's where IAJW helps. We provide the lift, the air in your tires, or even more--the rocket booster to lift you up back into the journaling habit.

A Journal Writing Prompt Blooms in My Garden

Many mornings I walk around my Florida yard--to see if new transplants are adapting to their new location, checking on the potted plants that they are sufficiently moist, watering some newly planted bamboo, visiting my avocado, mulberry, grapefruit and mango trees to make sure that they are happy. It's not a daily routine, but it's a continuous checking in to see how the plants are doing. I recently fertilized some bougainvillea which I moved from ground into pots, hoping to bring big splashes of color to the front walk and the back deck. On the fertilizer package, some text caught my eye: meaningful levels of micronutrients. The slogan struck me as a bit odd, and I started thinking about my own meaningful levels of micronutrients, small doses of things that have big impact.

How do I bring meaningful levels of micronutrients into my everyday life? Here are some things that I do--I sit outside as often as I can when I'm eating at home. I don't eat lunch and work at the same time. I try to write a few things that I feel grateful for during the day--or at least think of them as I'm falling asleep. I try to increase my F.Q. (my husband's shorthand for a term he coined: the "fun quotient") by going to a movie mid-week, going for a walk with a friend one morning each week, eating a small piece or two of dark chocolate a day, surprising an out-of-town friend with a phone call.

So try this journal writing prompt: What's a meaningful level of micronutrients that you use to sustain the blooming in your life? Can you identify your micronutrients?

Want journal writing prompts sent to your inbox once a week for a couple of months? Click here!

Writing Your Family Memoir: How to Begin

Writing your family memoir is like dusting for fingerprints.

You leave behind almost invisible fingerprints when you touch anything--refrigerator door handles, light switches, drinking glasses. Detectives know how to carefully coat these unseen marks with a fine powder and then use a camel hair brush to gently remove the excess powder so the fingerprints appear.

Families powerfully imprint each of us early in life in myriad of unique ways, leaving their marks (some might say scars!) forever. But like fingerprints, they are often nearly impossible to see clearly--especially if we are the ones upon whom the marks have been made.

So how to become detectives and discern in what ways our families have left their almost imperceptible imprints? What is the comparable fingerprint-revealing dusting powder that solves our own mysteries? During the process of writing your family memoir, subtle family dynamics suddenly appear. One memoirist likens the process of writing one section of her family memoir to watching a photograph as it's developing in a chemical bath. The whole picture becomes clearer and clearer as you work on it.

Memoir often flows from journal writing, but the difference is that journal writers usually write about each day as it is happening. In contrast, memoir writers looks back at their journey with fresh eyes, with a perspective that develops by examining the past, by remembering family stories. Usually not written directly from journal entries themselves (although in some cases they are), memoir is a way to go back in time, to really examine, digest, sort out and make sense of your life. Memoir turns daily disparate police reports into the detective story with the mystery solved. While writing a memoir, new clues surface, the process shifts and sharpens your understanding and the picture becomes clearer and more detailed.

Barbara Graham is a detective--um…rather, memoirist who recently edited and wrote a piece in the New York Times bestseller book, Eye of My Heart. She knows about memoir writing and about learning about herself from the process of writing your family memoir.

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