Put a Bullet in It

by Kasey Tross

New year, new adventures, new goals, new organization!

Yes, it's 2017, and like so many others, I have my sights set on new and exciting things for the year, and I've decided that one of those new things I want to try is a Bullet Journal. 

Bullet journaling has become this hot new trend, an "Analog System for the Digital Age." I first heard about it from a good friend- one of those people who always seems to have it all together, both temporally and emotionally/spiritually- and so it piqued my interest (grammar lesson for today, kiddos- it's "piqued my interest" not "peaked my interest." You're welcome.)

I asked her some questions about it one day, but I still didn't really "get" it, so I didn't think about it again until someone on a Facebook page I follow posted a link to a short video about it. I love a good how-to video, and this one's only 4 minutes long and it was made by the person who actually came up with the idea of bullet journaling, so I took 4 minutes out of my day to watch it. After that, I decided it was worth a shot (get it? BULLET journaling? Worth a SHOT? I am hilarious.)

Fortunately, I had a cute spiral-bound journal with my initial on it and a matching pen- Christmas gifts from my visiting teacher- and they just begged to become a part of my daily life, so I drafted them into service in my bullet journaling adventure.

So, how does it work?

Basically, your bullet journal becomes your brain- your planner, your calendar, your random-note-taking station, your to-do lists, etc. Because it is all of these things, it also serves as an actual journal of your life.

The first part of the journal is the index- and this is the part where I think the magic really comes in, because it allows you to really write anything you want in your bullet journal. One page might be a daily to-do list, another page might be an idea for your next book, another page might be gift ideas for your husband's birthday- just put it all in there! Then you simply go back to your index and add in the title of whatever it is, note the page number, and then you will always be able to find it.

There are some other core parts to bullet journals as well to help you plan your life, but what I love about it is that it is evolving, imperfect, and flexible. Because aren't we all evolving, imperfect, and flexible? I love that I can keep all my crazy ideas in one spot and know they're all right there.

I set up my bullet journal last night, and so far I have all my basics (see video), plus today's to-do list (#6 Write MMW post), a list of book titles I'd like to propose in a meeting of a brand-new book club starting this month, and a page for me to plan my daughter's birthday coming up next week (gift ideas, what she wants for dinner that day, her preferred cake flavor, etc.). 

I'm just starting on my bullet journaling adventure, but I'm excited to see what happens. I just love the idea of recording life in ink on a page, and I love that I can do that and get more organized at the same time.

How about you? Have you ever tried bullet journaling or do you think you might?

A Change in Perspective

By Lacey Gunter

As a picture book writer much of my editing time is spent figuring out what I can take out of my texts and still maintain the heart of the story. Words are a very expensive commodity in picture books so one has to be sparing and pick them wisely.

Picking what should stay and what should go is often a difficult task. Sometimes it requires a change in perspective. You have to step back and take in the big picture to distinguish the body of the story over the unnecessary details.

I recently found a surprising parallel in my journal writing. Until recently I had always bought into the idea that journal writing is 'supposed' to be a daily endeavor and any truly faithful journal writer was diligent enough to at least try to record things daily. Yet, I often struggled with what exactly to share. Many of my days seemed unexciting or at least similar to the day before. So what exactly do you write about on a daily basis? With this perspective I often lost motivation and steam and stopped trying after only a short time.

A couple of months ago I decided to try something totally different. In an effort to make our Sundays more meaningful, I decided to sit down with each of my young children and help them write a journal of their weekly activities. After just one week of doing this with them, I discovered it was dramatically more easy to write something when looking over the perspective of a week than just a day. I decided to try this with my own journal keeping.

Wow what a difference that perspective change has made. Instead of looking at the one inch square of daily life and trying to make sense of  and interpret the few different colored lines scratched into my day, I am able to step back and see the entire portrait of my week and discover how the pieces fit together to make a meaningful and interesting portrait of a window of my life. Best of all, I am actually excited to do it, rather than dreading it.

Tying that back into your writing, if you are stuck in a rut on a current WIP and can't make sense of what to do or where to go, take a look at it from a new angle.  Is there some rule, assumption or idea that is unnecessarily tying you down? Are you focusing in too closely on a minor piece of the picture and  trying to make sense of small bits of plot or character?  Try letting go of the perspective you are stuck in and step back to see the big picture.  It  may give you just the perspective you need to see how all the pieces fit together discover what is most meaningful.

Holy Journaling--

by Tiffany Pankau

When I think of writing a family history book I have to look for sources. Those sources can come from many different places but the best place is if someone, like one of great-grandmothers, left journals....tons of journals. Journals give us loads of information. In my great-grandmothers case she started journaling when she was young, about 15 years old, and they continued until she died when she was 92. Sometimes her journal entries were long and detailed, always including the weather and other times short and sweet... you know just tellin' what the weather was. She included when people were born,  her testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the weather (as I mentioned before), her troubles with the wash, when the kids were sick, when family members were quarreling and many more things. All these entries give me a sense of her life and make it easier to write a book about her if I so desired. Do they tell the whole story of her life? No, since its all in her point of view but it can help me get a clearer picture of all that is happening in the time she lived and of those around her. As I piece together her life and those around her I can write a wonderful life history of her. 

Spencer W. Kimball said, "I promise that if you will keep your journals and records, they will indeed be a source of great inspiration to your families, to your children, your grandchildren, and others on through the generations. Each of us is important to those who are near and dear to us and as our posterity reads of our life's experiences, they too, will come to know and love us. And in that glorious day when our families are together in the eternities, we will already be acquainted." 

As I said before most of us are already writing our family journals in our blog posts and facebook status', but what a wonderful treasure journals, and blog posts and facebook status' are. Did my great-grandmother know how awesome her journals would be to our family? Did she realize that by reading her journal someone could learn to know her and love her even without knowing her in this life? Do YOU realize that your posterity will treasure the things you write... even if we are just writing journals, or if we are self published writers, or published by a large or small publishing house, or even if we are never published? 

Part of the reason we write books, whether they are fiction or non-fiction, is that we can give something great and positive to  the world. That we can have a positive influence in the world and those around us. Writing in a journal can help with writers block, it can increase your understanding of the things in your life, and it can give you peace as we work toward writing other things, and it gives us time to step back and enjoy writing the things of our souls. 

So if you keep a journal keep it up... if you don't start now and then enjoy the blessings that can come from it. 

Writing For Ourselves

by Kasey Tross

*Side Note: This is my 100th post, so I’m going back to my roots- where this writer started!

Just last week I got the devastating news that a friend from high school had been diagnosed with leukemia. She has two young children- ages 1 1/2 and 5 months- and she had to be started on aggressive chemotherapy right away.

I received this information through Facebook, and because we live far apart it’s been more than 10 years since I’ve seen her in person. I felt helpless and frustrated that there was so little I could do. This friend was my first friend when I moved to West Virginia in eighth grade, and we stayed friends all during high school. She felt almost like a sister to me at times because we were so similar in so many ways- we had the same glasses (we both later got contacts), we both played the flute, and we were both shy. We both dated the same guy for awhile (and we both realized he was a jerk- don’t know why I didn’t believe her when she told me as much!) and we had the same group of friends. Recently, we even ended up being pregnant at the same time and had our babies within a month of each other.

Well, as I was trying to think of ways I might help support my friend, my thoughts turned back to those years, and so I went back to my journals from high school to read about the things we did together, curious to see how often her name might have appeared on the pages. I was an avid journal keeper from eighth grade on, but sadly, I was a boy-crazy teenage girl so I wrote quite a bit more about the boys in my life than I did about our friendship. However, I was able to find several instances when I mentioned her and some fun we had, and I have had such fun reading through my journals and reliving those great memories that I have decided to start sending her excerpts so that she can enjoy them with me.

In the past few years I have been so busy with mommying and with all the other writing in my life that I have neglected my journaling. But as I read through these journals, I realized once again that they are a treasure- not only to me, but to those I share my life with on a daily basis. The memories make me smile and laugh and cringe and then smile again, and I am able to see how I grew from a skinny, boy-crazy 12-year-old to a (almost) mature young woman who found the man I wanted to share eternity with. I realized that someday my own girls will probably be boy-crazy, self-obsessed pre-teens; but because of my journals I know what to expect from that phase, and I know that they will grow out of it (well, at least I hope so).

 I also realized that I want to continue that journey in writing, because as I age I want to be able to look back on these times with the same clarity I find in the journals of my youth. I want to remember what it was like to raise young children and be able to see my own personal growth over the years. I also want to have something that I can share with my children, especially my girls, when someday they are young mothers struggling through the day-to-day work of raising a family.

This life is for learning and growth- but not just our learning and growth. When we journal, we can leave behind a legacy of learning, a real-life story that will have far more worth to the generations to come than any bestselling novel. 

We are also making a record of the people and moments that mean something to us in our lives, so that when we come to a place where those people have grown up and changed, or they are faced with difficult trials like my friend, or they are even leaving us for the next life, we have concrete memories of the part they played in our lives, memories written in the freshness of the moment that we can treasure and learn from for years to come.

I challenge each of you to keep a journal. If you’re like me and computer keys work better for you than a pen, then use LDSJournal.com- it’s free and you can later print it out as a book. I have started back again and I am grateful for the space it gives me to write from my heart.

My friend said she had a good laugh at the excerpts I shared with her, and she said that reading it had made her day. I am grateful for the heartwarming memories I chose to record and keep safely tucked away, saved for a time when they are sorely needed. A journal is one of the most precious gifts we can give to ourselves and our families!

Do you keep a journal? Do you ever go back and read old journals?

Writing for posterity - the good, the bad and the boring?

By Lacey Gunter

I have recently started to get into genealogy. FamilySearch.org has done a major overhaul of their website and tools, making genealogy work dramatically more accessible and interesting.  One nice thing they have added is the ability to post pictures and stories about deceased ancestors. Looking through these pictures and reading stories about my ancestors has helped me to see these were real people who have had an affect on my life and has helped me to feel more connected to them.

Reading through these ancestral stories really highlights the importance of keeping a personal journal for ourselves and our posterity. How will the story of our life get painted if we choose to be silent on the matter. Will your posterity get the messages you are hoping to pass on to them?


What should these messages look like? It seems like a certain subset of the LDS faith (and likely in other Christian faiths) believe only positive, happy, wholly faith affirming stories and messages should be written in journals.  In essence, leaving out our doubts, mistakes, misgivings, failures and painful or embarrassing experiences.  On some levels I  understand this mode of thinking. It's difficult to admit and reveal one's imperfections. However, I find this idea short-sighted and superficial.  

The 'everything turned out just like it was supposed to' stories are nice to hear once in a while, but I find myself less moved or inspired by them. I find myself much more moved by the stories of relatives facing an awful or difficult situation, expressing their true feelings of hurt, doubt or fear, but hearing they eventually soldiered through somehow and found a way to cling to or come back to their sometimes wavering faith.  These stories make the person seem so much more real and relatable and help me to develop an appreciation and love for the kind of person they were.

But what about the dull, the mundane and the every day?  Let's face it, life isn't always exciting or romantic. It involves a lot of typical day to day repetition. This is where I struggle in my journal keeping. How do you keep your motivation and drive up when most things seem to feel the same as yesterday? I don't really know the answer to this, but I would love to hear from any of you who have figured it out.

However you do it, I encourage you to actually do it! Don't be silent in this one part of your life. Who needs the messages of you heart more than your posterity? Today is as good as any day to start.