Let's Get Wordy!

you had me until exercise...lol, just kidding! I am all in for helping people to journal more, tell the story!

 

Journaling has always been important to me. I started documenting my life in words in 3rd grade, a few years before I began collecting stuff in a scrapbook.

I feel like a page is unfinished without journaling and like writing down the details the pictures don't tell.

 

to hard for me, be it a private thing or just my lose of cogitive thinking

 

Like Cath, a lot of journaling is too private for the 'net. It's a creativity issue too. My writing brain is different than my play with pretty pictures brain. Getting them to connect at the same time can be a challenge.

 

For those that struggle, have you thought about saying out loud as if you were talking to someone, recording it for example on your phone, then just playing it back and typing it out (without the uhms, erms and likes!)?

 

Some phones even have talk to text and will convert it for you. the iPhone notepad will do it. =)

 

I tend to leave journaling to the end and then don't know where to put it or if I do it first, I don't like the design after. I almost feel like the journaling should be separate.

 

I used to have a hard time with the journaling part, but being part of Sara's CT made me realize that stories have to be told. I'm not good with words, so most of the time I'll just write a few lines to give a background story of what was happening when the picture was taken.

 

This is me too. I would love to learn how to creatively incorporate journaling onto a page - especially in ways where it is not really legible to others (but I know that it is there) and it adds to the overall design of the page.

 

Stories have to be told. First and foremost, my pages are for my family. I write my thoughts. They don't always line up in my page as I'd like. I sometimes re arrange. Sometimes I write first, if I know it will be a journaling focused page.

 

My struggles with journaling is I never know what to say, and everything I write sounds stupid to me. Even when I try to just do it from the heart. I'm way more of a minimalist as far as journaling goes.

 

Not every story has to be heartfelt. Perhaps you think you need to add more emotion than necessary. Sometimes just being more descriptive in narrating a story is all that is required to lift your journaling up a level.

 

I doubt it sounds nearly as stupid as you think. We are our own worst critics! And it doesn't have to be Shakespeare. It just needs to tell more about the memory than the picture does alone.

 

Ditto...and when I do write something from the heart, I feel embarrassed to let anyone read it.

 

For me, it's about remembering why I took the picture. I want to be able to go back years from now and be able to read just a small bit to help me remember. It's also for my kids. I want them to remember the times as well. I mostly scrap project life style so I think that makes journaling easier. I love looking at clean pages but end up filling mine with thoughts.

 

I never have a problem with what to say - and sometimes it's a lot and sometimes it's not! But my favourite pages are when the text is an integral part of the page - working as a design element itself if you will. Sometimes it just happens for me - but I'd love some more ideas about how to do it purposefully.

 

This isn't a whole lot of journaling, but it revolves around words -

 

The thing that I struggle with journaling is that photos are usually my prompts for the words so limited by the kind and number of photos I take. I usually scrap about my kids and sometimes struggle to write about those behind the scenes thoughts. Sometimes I will go with photoless or abstract to make do but these are few and far between.

 

What she said