Ways To Weave The Journal Into 112

Contributed by: Laura Solomon

Below is how I introduce the journal to my class. I've also listed some journal prompts and pasted my "journal day" activities below. I use the journal primarily to engage the students creatively. Since their journals are kept private, there are no "risks" involved for them. However, I've learned from many students that they like these activities and the creative challenges.

Introduction to the Journal: I asked each of you to purchase a mead notebook to serve as a journal for the semester. It will be your writer's notebook. Everything you write inside of it will remain private unless you choose to share it. Use it to jot down ideas for your essays or to record your thoughts, your day, or to keep track of the weather. It's also a good place for experimenting with different types of writing (fiction, poetry, comics, song lyrics, raps). You can make collages or ransom notes in it with words cut from magazines. You can write letters to imaginary, famous, dead or living people. You can free-write in it or record other people's conversations. You can collect in it words that stir you or that you don't know the exact meaning of-anything you like. Be creative, it's yours to do with as you will. You should write about 1-2 pages a week. Please number your pages, so I can flip through them easily. I will often give you time in class, and a writing prompt for those of you who need it.

Some sample journal prompts:

Finish the story: I'm going to read to you the first sentence of a story by Lydia Davis called "Transformation." Write down the sentence and then complete the story however you think it should go. This is always the first prompt I give in order to get them thinking about narrative.
Dialogue: Write a dialogue between two characters where one wants something from the other that the other doesn't want to give up (ex. A mugger and his victim; a Casanova and a virgin; a homeless person and a pedestrian; an employer and an employee; two siblings; two students-any two people where one has something the other wants). This also works well during the Personal Narrative Essay.
I Remember: A litany: Begin each sentence with "I remember." Try not to pick up your pen. If you cannot remember very much about a particular thing, move on. It does not have to be all from your childhood. It could be something from yesterday, a week ago, a year ago. Pay no attention to chronology of time, let the irrational part of your brain dictate the organization. I ask them to share if they would like and which sense prompted most of their memories. We then listen to a recorded selection from Joe Brainard's poem "I Remember" and discuss various logics of transition between JB's memories (sensory, word-associative, sound, motif, subject matter),and the many valid ways of moving between sentences/ paragraphs, thoughts, and the brain as a pattern-making machine. This is also a great segue for discussing imagery and detail.
America: I'd like for you to pretend our country, America, is a person, while keeping in mind all the feelings you have toward or about America in general. What is this person's relationship to you-is he or she a stranger, a friend, an enemy, a parent, a sibling, a rival, a toddler, an elder, an employer, etc? And what is this person like? What are his or her characteristics? How would you praise or reprimand this person, or would you? Would you give advice? Would you ask for advice? What would you say to this person, if he or she were now standing before you? Now with this in mind, begin writing, directly speaking to this person, beginning with the name "America." Similar to above exercise, we listen to a recording of Ginsberg's poem and then move into a discussion of "Why Johnny Can't Dissent."
Disparate items: Write a paragraph that includes a superhero, the color purple, a dog and a pop song. Another get-the-imagination-going kind of prompt.
The Things They Carried: Write down all the things you are carrying, physically (lint in your pocket, a broken #2 pencil) and metaphorically (the memory of your sister's laugh, a line from a movie, guilt over having missed class). I then mention the book and explain how the author creates and develops moving, believable characters simply by recording what each soldier carries. Good for discussing detail and metaphor.

Experimental Journal Day

At the end of the semester, when everyone's running ragged, I set aside a day for students to work exclusively in their journals. I bring supplies but also ask them to bring magazines, markers, scissors, glue sticks, etc. I usually set up four or five stations they may move through. Before we get started I show them some of Ed Ruscha's "word" paintings and an experimental text called "A Humament" (I can't remember who is the author). "A Humament" is really cool; the author takes another text and paints over it, leaving only certain words visible, and thus creates a new text (or exposes a hidden one) while also illustrating it. I try to show them how art and language go hand in hand, that words are in fact "images," and how by isolating a word or phrase, that word or phrase may become something mysterious, unidentifiable, and capable of exuding its own strange force upon the imagination. All of these activities are geared towards re-envisioning already existing "texts."

Collage and cut-up: Just like it sounds. (Mention Dada and Burroughs.)
Anagram poems: For this I ask them to think of a friend or family member's full name and then find words hidden within that person's name. I then ask them to use just those words to create a short poem for that person.
Song lyrics: At this station I ask them to take a familiar tune (National Anthem, Old Macdonald, My Name is Prince, whatever they like) and write new lyrics to accommodate the tune.
Mad Libs: Here I ask one person in the group to find an interesting paragraph from one of the essays in The Original Text-Wrestling Book or one from any other book on his or her person. Then I have that person denote one or two adjectives, nouns, verbs and/or adverbs within each sentence of the paragraph with a pencil. That person then asks the group for replacement parts of speech. The group then records the results in their journals. (Usually they want to do it again.)