inspired
to journal
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A
Morning Say
Take a few sentences from a journal entry or any writing that needs some sprucing up. Copy them onto a fresh piece of paper. Now mix up the words in any order, giving them all the same value, as Natalie says. Write them on the bottom half of the page - just a paragraph will do. You will have to repeat words, because you are writing more material than you started with. Now (this is the first fun part!), arbitrarily add punctuation. Throw in a few periods, commas, a colon, exclamation points and question marks. Don't read it as you go along, just do it without thinking, like a freewrite. Act like you are decorating the page with these symbols. Here's the first one I did, many years ago. ~~~~~~~ Always morning jumped. feel few try maybe is, this like out bed! here a words scribble that, say I maybe I'll feel. of a morning say? in try a when. always like, when morning few jumped this say I. here when mind. of maybe scribble words that, I when I'll out morning! ~~~~~~~ Phew! That's hard to type!! Here is the second fun part: read your new piece of writing in many tones of voice - happy, sad, excited, angry, hopeful. It's enlightening and amusing! Try reading mine that way to get the idea. In the book, Natalie goes on to explain syntax, sentences made of subject-verb-direct object. With this exercise, we are "cracking open that syntax" and allowing ourselves to see from a new perspective. It gives our writing and our lives freshness, getting us out of a rut! Give this a try and see what happens. After I did it, I titled my journal "A morning say...", since I write mainly in the morning. I never would have broken out of the mundane syntax to see it without this exercise. Have fun with this!
Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg *
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