A Choose Your Own Adventure Journalling Prompt

Be the hero in your own adventure

Welcome to the second season of Notes from the Margin Paid. Thank you, again, for your support so far, I’m glad to be on this adventure with you.

We’re kicking off the season with a fun journalling prompt.

What’s the purpose of the prompt?

Not all writing is about getting poems or prose down on the page. Some writing is the garden in which the poems and the prose grows. The best way to ensure that you have a plentiful supply of poems and prose to work on is to work on the garden. It is not enough to simply wait for inspiration to strike, inspiration comes from placing oneself in the way of events, experiences, art, music, books etc but also comes from examining self. It’s why a writer’s notebook is one of the greatest tools of the writer, because it allows the writer to catch the thoughts that might grow into something else.

I finished NaNoWriMo yesterday (15,400 words on a new novel, which I’m pleased with) and ended my Write Along sessions which I’d been running throughout November with this quote, attributed to Salman Rushdie. I particularly like the last part: “…writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things - childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves - that go slipping, like sand, through our fingers.”

This is how a journalling practice differs from a notebook practice - notebook is about gathering those immediate thoughts and feelings, whereas journalling is about routine, prompts, direction. If the notebook is the seed, then the journal is the tending of the shoots.

And so, to today’s prompt which is all about using metaphor to describe yourself and place yourself at the centre of your story. Below you’ll find your downloadable winter journal cover and prompt, which you can add to each month with the prompts provided. Have a go at this prompt, and then repeat it to see where you come out. Remember - your journal is for you, you don’t need to worry about perfection, this is your workroom, your play room, your place to experiment. Have fun.