Rating: 
Summary: A Basis of Creative Activity
Review: "Leaving a Trace"
Alexandra Johnson
ISBN 0-316-12156-8For those of us who have used our journal entries as the basis for writing, this book is apropos. Alexandra Johnson and others teach courses about journal and diary writing as the basis of creative activity. It was news to me that there are such courses. One of the keys to productive journal writing, according to the author, is to realize that journal entries need not only be about interesting places or unusual events. The everyday can be the source of material as well. As the author writes, "Life is in the details." It is interesting that many older people wish to achieve an understanding of their lives by writing about them in journals or diaries. I suppose the most helpful thing that one learns from this book is to approach journal writing less formally. One does not have to be constrained to write everything in a commercially produced diary or to try to write only profound things. It took Frank McCourt, the author of "Angela's Ashes", years to realize that writing about the poverty of his early life could be literature. Unconsciously, I had made some of the observations Alexandra Johnson makes, but I had not come to understand them as she does. For example, my father had written a diary when he was about twenty-one years old. Even though, he lived to be fifty-six, I had always regarded this diary as his best legacy. When an uncle of mine died, I asked for any journal that he might have kept. Eventually I came into possession of a number of letters that he had written to his parents when he was a soldier in WWII from Germany, France, Panama, and the Philippine Islands. So in a way, these letters formed the basis of a non-traditional kind of journal. All in all, "Leaving a Trace" is interesting reading. I looked forward to picking it up each evening before falling asleep, my favorite reading. I was even inspired to write in the journal that I had not touched in over a year. Johnson's primary message would seem to be that recording our lives does matter. Doing so is a way of coming to terms with them and a leaving of something of oneself behind. The key is to simply write about one's life, interests, and observations. Recently, I have had the opportunity to help my mother-in-law record the details of her terrible ordeal of being a refugee in World War II. It has been surprising to me how excited this project has made her. After almost sixty years, she had perhaps never entirely comprehended or understood these events. Somehow having someone help her write about them seemed to help facilitate this. For those who have thought about getting started with a journal or writing one better, this book would be a good place to begin.
Rating:
Summary: Dalvay-By-The-Sea
Review: Alexandra Johnson has given much to the scholarly work on creativity. This book celebrates the journal, the science -- if you will -- and detective work of keeping ones own journal. I highly recommend it as a former student of hers. As a poet, I was lucky enough to find myself in these pages. Through such activities as this book marks the path for, I have found reverence with the past and celebrate my late Aunt Gertrude with this poem from my journal, maybe you have something to celebrate and add from your writing, too? Dalvay-By-The-Sea On the porch you poured the water from the tin jug.
You patted your skin to gather and move
The splash and pull of the cold and the clean. Pink and dappled as a mare's girth, your hand
Met your ankle, held, then tired. With your knees tucked, you sat on the stoop,
Your dress crumpled at your lap,
Then set your eyes on the old pine chair. You imagined what you might place next
To a rusted buttercup pressed, there, in your diary hours ago.
Rating:
Summary: Dalvay-By-The-Sea
Review: Alexandra Johnson has given much to the scholarly work on creativity. This book celebrates the journal, the science -- if you will -- and detective work of keeping ones own journal. I highly recommend it as a former student of hers. As a poet, I was lucky enough to find myself in these pages. Through such activities as this book marks the path for, I have found reverence with the past and celebrate my late Aunt Gertrude with this poem from my journal, maybe you have something to celebrate and add from your writing, too? Dalvay-By-The-Sea On the porch you poured the water from the tin jug.
You patted your skin to gather and move
The splash and pull of the cold and the clean. Pink and dappled as a mare's girth, your hand
Met your ankle, held, then tired. With your knees tucked, you sat on the stoop,
Your dress crumpled at your lap,
Then set your eyes on the old pine chair. You imagined what you might place next
To a rusted buttercup pressed, there, in your diary hours ago.
Rating:
Summary: NOT JUST A JOURNAL, BUT A LEGACY
Review: As a counsellor, I encourage many people to keep journals. They allow one to voice their opinions, express their thoughts, record the highs and lows in their life, and putting those feelings on paper is an excellent theraputic way of reducing stress. Whether you actually show your journal to anyone or keep it private is a personal choice. Remember, if anything should happen to you, negative comments made about individuals you have specifically named in your journal, will have the potential to hurt those people if your journal is eventually read by them. On the other hand, the happy times recorded in your journal will be cherished by those who shared those special times with you. Journals are not just for constructive therapy; they can make excellent legacies for those we love and leave behind - our mark to leave upon the world after we are gone. This book is an excellent teaching tool on keeping a journal or writing a memoir. The older we become, the more tempted we are to leave a part of us behind, after we are gone, that will help others understand who we really were. The author covers a fast amount of material in this book that gives us the ability to make the pages of our life magically come alive with colour and detail. In our journal we can recall the happy times and the times of great sorrow, special events, those we love, the birth of our chidren, people we have met, trips taken, achievements and goals obtained - the list is endless. All those important moments that make up a human life can be printed on paper and left behind for those we love. If you have never thought of keeping a journal, or simply want to improve your content and expression in your current journal, this book is for you. Who knows what might become of your journal one day, and anything worth doing is worth doing well.
Rating:
Summary: NOT JUST A JOURNAL, BUT A LEGACY
Review: As a counsellor, I encourage many people to keep journals. They allow one to voice their opinions, express their thoughts, record the highs and lows in their life, and putting those feelings on paper is an excellent theraputic way of reducing stress. Whether you actually show your journal to anyone or keep it private is a personal choice. Remember, if anything should happen to you, negative comments made about individuals you have specifically named in your journal, will have the potential to hurt those people if your journal is eventually read by them. On the other hand, the happy times recorded in your journal will be cherished by those who shared those special times with you. Journals are not just for constructive therapy; they can make excellent legacies for those we love and leave behind - our mark to leave upon the world after we are gone. This book is an excellent teaching tool on keeping a journal or writing a memoir. The older we become, the more tempted we are to leave a part of us behind, after we are gone, that will help others understand who we really were. The author covers a fast amount of material in this book that gives us the ability to make the pages of our life magically come alive with colour and detail. In our journal we can recall the happy times and the times of great sorrow, special events, those we love, the birth of our chidren, people we have met, trips taken, achievements and goals obtained - the list is endless. All those important moments that make up a human life can be printed on paper and left behind for those we love. If you have never thought of keeping a journal, or simply want to improve your content and expression in your current journal, this book is for you. Who knows what might become of your journal one day, and anything worth doing is worth doing well.
Rating: 
Summary: What to do with your journals...
Review: I am an avid journaler, and this book was a delight to read. It wouldn't be a book for a beginner, however. Only the first few chapters really talk about how to journal. The rest of the book is more about how to "harvest" your journals and what to do with them to turn them into other creative writing, seeing patterns and writing about those, etc. The book has some excellent quotes. Here's a good one: "To keep a journal is to know the present is still under consideration, merely a first draft of your experience." So there's some food for thought - and pen! My favorite books on journaling are "Journal Keeping" by Luann Budd and "How to Keep a Spiritual Journal" by Ron Klug.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful entry into the world of journaling
Review: I first heard about this book while listening to NPR when Alexandra Johnson did a segment on the Diane Rehm Show about journaling. The show was intriguing enough that I decided to find the book at the library. To my delight, the book was more intriguing than the radio interview. Alexandria Johnson takes us on a journey of diaries and journaling through the words and examples of other people who commit their words to paper...or drawings...or anything they wish. That was the beauty of this book...it showed you that there isn't a right way or a wrong way to start a journal. More importantly, Ms. Johnson showed us through the examples of other journal writers, that journals can take all different forms from words, to drawings, to collages, old grocery receipts, photographs, video, anything. She also shows us that there aren't any rules to journaling. She states in her book that many people wish to start a journal, but don't because of the perceived "rules" of journaling, that one must write in their journal every day, that one must write in a "proper" journal, that one must write profoundly in every entry. This book shows us that there are no rules to journaling and the only thing that's important is that one must start. And the only real crime of journaling, is never starting one. The other strength of this book is that the author not only breaks these myths of journaling, but she also shows us the many different uses for journaling. In this book you get ideas for not only starting personal journals, but also nature journals, travel journals, gratitude journals, commonplace journals, dream journals, and even family chronicles. Each chapter also ends with useful journal prompts and exercises to get the reader started on their own journals. I do have one gripe with the book, and that is that I wish that there was a bibilography listing some of the books the author quoted in the book. All in all, this was a great book. A word of warning, buy a journal when you start reading this book, because you will want to start one right away after reading just the first few chapters.
Rating:
Summary: This is the most beautifully written book on journaling!
Review: If you want a delightful read as well as rare glimpses into others' journal keeping style then read this terrific book; you will not be disappointed!
Rating:
Summary: Most Useful For Those Beyond The Basics
Review: There are a lot of books out there on keeping journals, and all of them contain very similar, and sound, basic advice: use whatever format helps, just ignore the censorious voice, there are no rules, etc. This book covers those points adequately, to be sure. Where this book excels, however, is in guiding the reader who is beyond the basics--the reader who has accumulated a pile of journals and is ready to take them as raw material and do something more with them, be it more journaling at a deeper level or extracting and preparing a work for publication. Professor Johnson presents a number of ideas along this line that I have not seen elsewhere. This book lost a star in my view because, in addition to the lack of bibliography noted by other reviewers, the material about mining the journals is not presented in a well-organized fashion. For example: Johnson identifies ten categories of life patterns that one can perceive in journals past: longing; fear; mastery;(intentional) silences; key influences; hidden lessons; secret gifts; challenges; unfinished business; untapped potential. I found this to be a very helpful analysis, yet it is casually mentioned in the text in a way that is easy to miss and hard to locate again for reference. This book must be mined for insights in just the same way that one mines a journal. It's not a fatal flaw, but I think I expected more in a published work. Nonetheless, it is worth the effort for long-time journal-keepers.
Rating:
Summary: New ideas for an old exercise
Review: There are lots of books about how to keep a journal and why to keep a journal but this is the only one I've seen that not only covers those two issues but suggests what to do with the material you've already journaled. Since I'm not one who relies much on indexes -- I tend to highlight as I read -- and make notes in the margins, I didn't miss that as other reviewers here have indicated. I didn't expect it, either, because this isn't a textbook. It's just a beautifully written, new concept on journaling. "Keeping a journal is one of the few ways to remind oneself of life's unnoticed gifts," she writes, and gives exercises to stretch the writer into finding those gifts. In the chapter "Finding the Through Line in Life: Memoir and Fiction," she says the journalist unconsciously tries to find the meaning of life and shows how to detect it in your own writing. I do recommend it to both the new diarist and the experienced one. I'm sure you'll find new ideas and new material here.
| 
