Journaling is a great tool for connecting with your day to day experiences and for going deeper in your writing (for all my writers out there).  Take a picture, like the one above, and dive into it.  What images or thoughts come to your mind?  What body response is triggered when you look at the image above?  If you could dialog with any part of the picture what would it say to you?  Adopt the first person and give that part a voice. 

It can be very surprising where this type of exercise takes you.  You don't need this picture, you can randomly open up a magazine and look at the first picture you find or even go out into your back yard or visit a park and dive into an object in nature.  The important thing is to allow your imagination to flow, limiting nothing and giving your subconscious a chance to speak its response. 

Try it and see where it takes you.

This week I have the pleasure of co-facilitating a writing camp with 6th through 9th graders.  My partner and I agree that one of the greatest inhibitors to creation of any kind is the "muppet" or critical voice that rides around on our shoulder and continually lets us know that we are wrong or imperfect or stupid or can't do this or.....  We decided that we wanted to begin this camp by addressing head on the voice of the muppet.  And so we invited these young people to create the image of their muppet.  The range and variety was astounding BUT the amazing thing was the commonality of experience.  The muppet silences some and feels like puppet strings to others.  One is firmly held in the grasp of his muppet and is bombarded by should's and don'ts.  Another feels like the weight of the world while others echo the demands of being perfect.  Some pierce, all hurt and get in the way of full expression. 

 

And so I ask you...what does your muppet say to you...how much power do you allow it to have in your life?  What would it be like if you simply took a stance of inquiry and asked your muppet, "Is that true?  Is that really true?"  This has been an amazing process and the gifts of naming the muppet have been huge...more to come!