What is a journal?

A journal is a written record of your thoughts, experiences, and observations. You can write in
your journal daily, or only when you feel the urge. You can write with a fountain pen in a leather-
bound book if that inspires you, or you can write with your lucky pencil on the backs of dollar bills
if you are both superstitious and rich. It's entirely up to you.

Our whole lives we are told to write a certain way, to use a number two pencil and stay within the
lines, to fill up exactly three pages with our thoughts on a specific theme, being sure to include
topic sentences and a conclusion. Journaling is different. With journaling, there are no rules, no
rights or wrongs. You might decide to share parts of your journal, but, fundamentally, your journal
is for you. So you're in charge. Your journal is a space where you're absolutely free to express
yourself.

There's a lot of interest out there in journal prompts, so I've included some on this website.
Please don't feel, though, that you need prompts or assignments for writing in your journal. Your
daily life, the places you spend time, the people you spend time with, any thought passing
through your mind -- all this is perfect journaling material. As the writer Linda Leopold
Strauss says, "The world is your writing prompt." But in case you do want some ideas to get you
started, click here.
What is a journal - Why keep a journal?

Here are just a few of the reasons for journaling:

 Preserve memories. It's amazing how quickly we forget. For instance, try remembering in
detail your day exactly one week ago. Can you remember what you wore? What you ate for
lunch? What you felt and thought about?Try an experiment. Write down in detail everything
that happened to you today. I bet you can keep going for a dozen pages or more. But if you
try to write about yesterday, you might have trouble filling up more than a couple of pages.
And if you go to the day before yesterday, you probably have even less. We are constantly
losing pieces of our own lives, pieces of ourselves. A journal is a way of keeping them.
 Improve your writing. Generally, the more you write, the better a writer you become. Writing
regularly makes writing easier, and it helps you develop your own writing voice. Even if your
journal is just for yourself and it doesn't matter how "good" it is, journaling builds muscles
that you can use for other kinds of writing. And the fact that it is, generally, for your eyes
only makes your journal an ideal laboratory for experimenting with new styles, techniques,
and subject matter, increasing your range as a writer.Your journal is also a place to collect
ideas and material for creative writing. All of the sights, sounds, tastes, and feelings you
 record, the overheard pieces of conversation, the people you were watching in the street --
all of these can be recycled in stories and poems. These observed details will give your
creative writing the texture of reality.
 Sharpen your senses. Writing about your experience can make you a better observer.
When we know we're going to write about something, we pay a different kind of attention to
it. Keeping a journal gets you in the habit of noticing the details of your daily life. The result
is like a heightening of the senses, as you observe the world with greater richness and
complexity.

Of course, another reason for journaling is simply for the love of doing it. You may take sensual
pleasure in the velvety looping of ink across the creamy surface of a page, or in the private time
with your thoughts at the end of a hectic day. You may find it comforting or therapeutic to pour out
your emotions in writing. And the other side of journaling is reading. You can always go back to
old journals and find windows into your past.

A diary is a record (originally in handwritten format) with discrete entries arranged

by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. A personal
diary may include a person's experiences, thoughts, and/or feelings, excluding comments on
current events outside the writer's direct experience. Someone who keeps a diary is known as
a diarist.

Storytelling is the interactive art of using words and actions to reveal the elements and
images of a story while encouraging the listener’s imagination.
1. Storytelling is interactive.
Storytelling involves a two-way interaction between a storyteller and one or more listeners.
The responses of the listeners influence the telling of the story. In fact, storytelling
emerges from the interaction and cooperative, coordinated efforts of teller and audience.
In particular, storytelling does not create an imaginary barrier between the speaker and
the listeners. This is part of what distinguishes storytelling from the forms of theatre that
use an imaginary “fourth wall.”
Different cultures and situations create different expectations for the exact roles of
storyteller and listener – who speaks how often and when, for example – and therefore
create different forms of interaction.
The interactive nature of storytelling partially accounts for its immediacy and impact. At its
best, storytelling can directly and tightly connect the teller and audience.

2. Storytelling uses words.

Storytelling uses language, whether it be a spoken language or a manual language such
as American Sign Language. The use of language distinguishes storytelling from most
forms of dance and mime.
3. Storytelling uses actions such as vocalization, physical movement
and/or gesture.
These actions are the parts of spoken or manual language other than words. Their use
distinguishes storytelling from writing and text-based computer interactions. Not all
nonverbal language behaviors need to be present in storytelling. Some storytellers use
body movement extensively, for example, whereas others use little or none.

4. Storytelling presents a story.

Storytelling always involves the presentation of a story—a narrative. Many other art forms
also present story, but storytelling presents it with the other four components. Every
culture has its own definition of story. What is recognized as a story in one situation may
not be accepted as one in another. Some situations call for spontaneity and playful
digression, for example; others call for near-exact repetition of a revered text. Art forms
such as poetry recitation and stand-up comedy sometimes present stories and sometimes
don’t. Since they generally involve the other four components, they can be regarded as
forms of storytelling whenever they also present stories.

5. Storytelling encourages the active imagination of the listeners.

In storytelling, the listener imagines the story. In most traditional theatre or in a typical
dramatic film, on the other hand, the listener enjoys the illusion that the listener is actually
witnessing the character or events described in the story.
The storytelling listener’s role is to actively create the vivid, multi-sensory images, actions,
characters, and events—the reality—of the story in his or her mind, based on the
performance by the teller and on the listener’s own past experiences, beliefs, and
understandings. The completed story happens in the mind of the listener, a unique and
personalized individual. The listener becomes, therefore, a co-creator of the story as
experienced.
Storytelling can be combined with other art forms. The fruit born by the vital, contemporary
storytelling movement includes the development of ways to combine storytelling with
drama, music, dance, comedy, puppetry, and numerous other forms of expression. Yet,
even as it blends imperceptibly into other arts, the essence of storytelling remains
recognizable as the intersection of the five components included in the above definition.

Storytelling happens in many situations, from kitchen-table conversation to religious ritual,

from telling in the course of other work to performances for thousands of paying listeners.
Some storytelling situations demand informality; others are highly formal. Some demand
certain themes, attitudes, and artistic approaches. As noted above, the expectations about
listener interaction and the nature of the story itself vary widely.
There are many cultures on earth, each with rich traditions, customs and opportunities for
storytelling. All these forms of storytelling are valuable. All are equal citizens in the diverse
world of storytelling.
Poetry, literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience
or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for
its meaning, sound, and rhythm.
Poetry is a vast subject, as old as history and older, present wherever religion is
present, possibly—under some definitions—the primal and primary form of
languages themselves. The present article means only to describe in as general a
way as possible certain properties of poetry and of poetic thought regarded as in
some sense independent modes of the mind. Naturally, not every tradition nor every
local or individual variation can be—or need be—included, but the article illustrates
by examples of poetry ranging between nursery rhyme and epic. This article
considers the difficulty or impossibility of defining poetry; man’s nevertheless
familiar acquaintance with it; the differences between poetry and prose; the idea of
form in poetry; poetry as a mode of thought; and what little may be said in prose of
the spirit of poetry.
Attempts To Define Poetry

Poetry is the other way of using language. Perhaps in

some hypothetical beginning of things it was the only way of using language
or simply was language tout court, prose being the derivative and younger
rival. Both poetry and language are fashionably thought to have belonged
to ritual in early agricultural societies; and poetry in particular, it has been
claimed, arose at first in the form of magical spells recited to ensure a good
harvest. Whatever the truth of this hypothesis, it blurs a useful distinction: by
the time there begins to be a separate class of objects called poems,
recognizable as such, these objects are no longer much regarded for their
possible yam-growing properties, and such magic as they may be thought
capable of has retired to do its business upon the human spirit and not
directly upon the natural world outside.
Formally, poetry is recognizable by its greater dependence on at least one
more parameter, the line, than appears in prose composition. This changes
its appearance on the page; and it seems clear that people take their cue
from this changed appearance, reading poetry aloud in a very different voice
from their habitual voice, possibly because, as Ben Jonson said, poetry
“speaketh somewhat above a mortal mouth.” If, as a test of this description,
people are shown poems printed as prose, it most often turns out that they
will read the result as prose simply because it looks that way; which is to
say that they are no longer guided in their reading by the balance and shift
of the line in relation to the breath as well as the syntax.
Memoir. An autobiography is the story of your life to date. It is usually chronologically based, and
it starts with when you are young and all the things that happened to you along the way in your
life.

An autobiography is—and one of the ways I think about that is as if it was a whole pie --it’s
everything. But when you think about a memoir, it’s really a slice of your life. It could be just one
time period, and it could be just one aspect of your life. For instance if you have diabetes, it might
go across multiple years, and you might look at the diagnosis and how you manage. You might
decide, I am not talking about the other things that happened to me. I am not talking about my
relationships. I am not talking about my education. I am talking about living with diabetes. And
then that would be the focus. So it isn’t a matter of years, it’s really a matter of scope. That then
becomes the way that you distinguish the two of them.

Definition of Vignette

Vignette is a small impressionistic scene, an illustration, a descriptive

passage, a short essay, a fiction or nonfiction work focusing on one
particular moment; or giving an impression about an
idea, character, setting, mood, aspect, or object. Vignette is neither
a plot nor a full narrative description, but a carefully crafted verbal sketch
that might be part of some larger work, or a complete description in itself.

Literally, vignette is a French word that means “little vine.” The printers,
during the nineteenth-century, would decorate their title pages with drawings
of looping vines. Hence, the derivation of this term is that source of
drawings. Contemporary ideas from the scenes shown in television and film
scripts also have influenced vignettes.

Examples of Vignette in Literature

Example #1: In Our Time (By Ernest Hemingway)

“Maera lay still, his head on his arms, his face in the sand. He felt warm and
sticky from the bleeding. Each time he felt the horn coming. Sometimes the
bull only bumped him with his head. Once the horn went all the way through
him and he felt it go into the sand … Maera felt everything getting larger and
larger and then smaller and smaller. Then it got larger and larger and larger
and then smaller and smaller. Then everything commenced to run faster
and faster as when they speed up a cinematograph film. Then he was
dead.”

In this impressionistic sketch, the author gives an illustration of the character

Maera, who is a bullfighter that dies from injures inflicted by a bull.
Example #2: An American Childhood (By Annie Dillard)

“Some boys taught me to play football. This was fine sport. You thought up
a new strategy for every play and whispered it to the others. You went out
for a pass, fooling everyone. Best, you got to throw yourself mightily at
someone’s running legs … In winter, in the snow, there was neither baseball
nor football, so the boys and I threw snowballs at passing cars. I got in
trouble throwing snowballs, and have seldom been happier since.”

In this excerpt, Dillard has used her personal experiences while growing up
in Pittsburgh, and describes the nature of American life. In this particular
scene, she tells us how she learned to play football with the boys, and
offering this incident of her teenage years.

Types of Creative Writing

Free writing: Open a notebook or an electronic document and just start writing.
Let strange words and images find their way to the page. Anything goes! It’s the
pinnacle of creative writing.
Journals: A journal is any written log. You could keep a gratitude journal, a
memory journal, a dream journal, or a goals journal. Many writers keep idea
journals or all-purpose journals that can be used for everything from daily
freewrites to brainstorming and project planning.
Diaries: A diary is a type of journal in which you write about your daily life. Some
diaries are written in letter format (“Dear Diary…”). If you ever want to write a
memoir, it would be a good idea to start keeping a diary.
Letters: Because the ability to communicate effectively is increasingly valuable,
letter writing is a useful skill. There is a long tradition of publishing letters, so take
extra care with those emails you’re shooting off to friends, family, and business
associates. In fact, one way to get published if you don’t have a lot of clips and
credits is to write letters to the editor of a news publication.
Memoir: Memoirs are books that contain personal accounts (or stories) that
focus on specific experiences. For example, one might write a travel memoir.
Essays. Essay’s are often associated with academic writing, but there are many
types of essays, including personal essays, descriptive essays, and persuasive
essays, all of which can be quite creative (and not especially academic).
Journalism: Some forms of journalism are more creative than others.
Traditionally, journalism was objective reporting on facts, people, and events.
Today, journalists often infuse their writing with opinion and storytelling to make
their pieces more compelling or convincing.
Poetry: Poetry is a popular but under-appreciated type of writing, and it’s easily
the most artistic, creative form of writing. You can write form poetry, free-form
poetry, and prose poetry. Or try writing a story in rhyme (perfect for kids).
Song lyrics: Song lyrics combine the craft of writing with the artistry of music.
Composing lyrics is similar to writing poetry, and this is an ideal type of writing for
anyone who can play a musical instrument.
Scripts: Hit the screen or the stage by writing scripts for film, television, theater,
or video games. Beware: scripts are a director’s medium, not a writer’s medium,
but they have the potential to reach a non-reading audience.
Storytelling: Storytelling is the most popular form of creative writing and is found
in the realms of both fiction and nonfiction writing. Popular forms of fiction include
flash fiction, short stories, novellas, and full-length novels. True stories, which are
usually firsthand or secondhand accounts of real people and events, can be
found in essays, diaries, memoirs, speeches, and more. Both forms of
storytelling (real and fictional) can be found in poetry.
Speeches: Whether persuasive, inspirational, or informative, speech writing can
lead to interesting career opportunities in almost any career field.
Vignettes: A vignette is defined as “a brief evocative description, account, or
episode.” Vignettes can be poems, stories, descriptions, personal
accounts…anything goes really. The key is that a vignette is extremely short —
just a quick snippet.
Honorable Mention: Blogs. A blog is not a type of writing; it’s a publishing
platform — a piece of technology that displays content on the web or an
electronic device. A blog can be used to publish any type of writing. Most blogs
feature articles and essays, but you can also find blogs that contain diaries or
journals, poetry, journalism, and more.
What is creative nonfiction?
Which of these types of creative writing have you tried? Are there any forms of
writing on this list that you’d like to experiment with? Can you think of any types
of creative writing to add to this list? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment,
and keep writing.