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Over the years I have made many aborted attempts at keeping a journal. Starting out with the best of intentions, I would soon lose interest when my journal writing became very dull, little more than a recording of facts and events.
Stephanie Dowrick's 'Creative journal writing' helped to change all that. While Stephanie still talks about the importance of recording facts and events, she shows us how a journal can be so much more.
After briefly discussing the reasons for keeping a journal, and how to go about choosing a journal, Stephanie then presents us with many exercises and examples which help us to explore a whole range of deeper issues.
Using techniques such as free association, observing your internal and extenal environments, reflection, venting and many others we learn how to make our journal writing more interesting.
There are many reasons for keeping a journal, and many ways of journal writing. Stephanie covers just about all of them in this book. Some of the exercises here may appeal to you, some may not. The trick is to pick what works for you, and just write. This is probably the best book I've come across to help you get started.
Released after his award-winning novel 'Three Dollars' but before his massive work 'Seven types of ambiguity', this collection of short stories by Elliot Perlman shares many characteristics of both those other books.
Each of these nine stories, to my mind, deals with an aspect of loss - the loss of friends, lovers, family; the loss of innocence; the loss of hope and the loss of life. Perlman's great skill is in showing us how his characters deal with these dilemmas, or, in some cases, fail to deal with them.
In this respect the stories remind me very much of 'Three dollars'. I suspect that many of the stories were written before that first novel because you can see in them the development of Perlman's style. His writing is imbued with a deep social conscience, exploring the lives of those living on the fringes of society.
Perlman is obviously well read, his writing being littered with many obscure literary references, reminding me very much of his second novel 'Seven types of ambiguity', which referred to the work of William Empson (among many others). My favourite story in this collection is 'I was only in a childish way', which refers to the work of Russian poet Osip Mandelstam. I'd never heard of this writer, and one of the great strengths of Perlman's writing is that it inspires me to do further reading.
It's interesting to note also, that this story is one of few in this collection that contains a sizable portion of dialogue. I think some reviewers have criticised Perlman's writing for containing too much narration and not enough dialogue. While I enjoy all of Perlman's writing, I do think the inclusion of dialogue makes the story more readable.
If, like me, you've read Perlman's novels first, I think you will enjoy this collection of stories. If you haven't read any of his writing, then this is a great place to start.
Over the years I have made many aborted attempts at keeping a journal. Starting out with the best of intentions, I would soon lose interest when my journal writing became very dull, little more than a recording of facts and events.
