September's Journal Prompt
(No. 61) The Art of Paying Attention - Write the External Details
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Let me start with a confession. This month’s prompt is a challenge for me. It might challenge you, too. But like a good stretch for tight muscles, I hope this will help stretch our minds and weave a new thread of thought into our regular journaling routines.
I recently attended an online course hosted by author, poet, and educator
with author and educator as the guest lecturer. We began the class learning about and practicing a writing craft concept called exteriority. While this class focused on fiction or creative nonfiction writing, I felt inspired to incorporate what I learned about exteriority into my journaling practice, and I’m inviting you to try it, too.Journaling is a very introspective practice centered on what we think and feel. We write to connect with our inner selves, thoughts, and so on—to make the unconscious conscious. Journaling is like an excavation of our internal worlds or a transference of the internal to the external page.
Exteriority1 refers to writing down the details of the external world and using those details to create an inviting and memorable experience for the reader. Exteriority means writing to recreate the world as you observe it, using vivid sensory language and concrete details: the red marker, the bitter coffee, the crinkled paper, the musty attic.
With exteriority in fiction and creative nonfiction, the writers’ internal experiences and perspectives are omitted or severely restrained. The writer’s thoughts and feelings don’t stand in the way of the reader’s. But we’re talking about journaling here. So, how can we bring exteriority into our journal practice, which is so heavily focused on processing our internal experiences—and why should we?
Paying attention to and listening to life are two similar, powerful healing concepts that journaling can help us with. Frederick Buechner’s book Listening to Your Life is one I reference as influencing this way of living and writing for me.
“[I]f I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”
— Frederick Buechner, Now and Then (1983)
I’ve noticed that I can get a little imbalanced and caught up too much in my thoughts and feelings. I spend a lot of time journaling to make sense of my internal world and, honestly, find relief (journaling can be a great emotional pressure valve). Sometimes, I need to get outside myself—to look out and not just within. If you notice your journaling is heavily introspective, this is an invitation to include exteriority.
Now, some of us have used journaling as record-keeping: Dear Diary, This is what happened today. We’re recording past events and moments. There’s a time and purpose for this type of journaling, but if we’re looking for healing or transformation, we need to incorporate a bit more.
If we’re trying to use our writing or journaling to heal from a specific hurt in our lives, we must connect experiences to emotions—answering “What happened?” and “What do I make of that (or how do I feel) about that?”2 Do you see the incorporation of the external and the internal here?
Including exteriority in our journaling can be a tool for expansion and growth.