Who knows where this journey will take us? Let's be brave and move forward.
I've been working on what I think may turn into a book about students. Or not. I have written 10 pages about a former student and events related to him NOT becoming a teacher. He got so close, but it took a turn.
I'm keeping a journal. Sometimes only through talking with other people can I figure out what needs to go in the journal. Or maybe through writing about an event, I realize that there's something important that I forgot to put in the journal.
For example, I was listing character traits to put in a poem. I realized that I forgot to put this in my journal at the time that it happened:
A male student who was working his way through a rough case of PTSD brought me an object one day. It was a nasty jagged heavy piece of metal. It was a part of the IED that had lodged in the side of his vehicle the day he was wounded. He keeps it on his bedside table as a good luck charm.
How could I forget to put that in my journal?
I keep a journal too. Not in the sense that I sit down everyday and write about all the small insignificant things I did with my life. I keep a notebook where I write down fleeting thoughts. I am very easily distracted and it's difficult for me to recall certain ideas or concepts so I just jot them down. It makes things easy to find when I want to go back and elaborate on something. That journal takes me in some pretty random directions from time to time and it also acts as a go to for my frustrations with life. When I was young my mother encouraged me to journal and I have composition notebooks that go back twenty years. One day I'll compile them all and become famous. Probably after I die :o)
ReplyDeleteSounds like you have a journal habit. So many great writers do! I'm not as consistent as I should be, but I keep plugging away at it.
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