Scrapbook of Memories

Dear Word lovers,

A few days ago, i posted this thought from John Berendt on my facebook page (here):

“Keep a diary, but don’t just list all the things you did during the day. Pick one incident and write it up as a brief vignette. Give it color, include quotes and dialogue, shape it like a story with a beginning, middle and end—as if it were a short story or an episode in a novel. It’s great practice. Do this while figuring out what you want to write a book about. The book may even emerge from within this running diary.”

I thought it was good advice for me and all those who want to write and keep a diary as a starting point in their disciplined journey towards being a writer. We all know the routine, we start by promising ourselves that we'll write daily, then it changes to weekly and sooner or later these diaries make way to a hidden storage or an obscure corner of the bookshelf with many others like them.

A reader-friend of the page had other thoughts though. She read the post out to her daughters "and one of them got so inspired she started writing straight away. Result ...2 haiku poems!!" I was excited by the sheer joy and spontaniety the child showed. How quickly children come to the task at hand while we adults continue to sit and debate! The next day she wrote her first 'stoem' (her word for story poem)!

Yesterday, the proud mom shared another wonderful thought with me. And it is so good that i want to share it with you all. I think we all can learn a lot from it:

"The art of diary writing my grandfather possessed had missed me completely. I tried my best to revive it and bought new diaries for my girls every year and they invariably ended up hidden/lost after couple of months. Now I can safely say I will not be buying diaries for them ..instead we started a new tradition ...a scrapbook of memories ...the best thing about it is you can write at any time of day...and we also changed the submission requirements so it can be poems, stoems, stories, or even drawings!!! ....which suit us to the ground!!!"

Now i'm going to start my very own 'scrapbook of memories.' And i'll try to be as regulalr as possible. Maybe it'll lead me to my own published book someday!

Would you like to join me in this journey? :)

-adee