In a journaling rut? 5 ideas for fresh inspiration
From the slightly magical to the practical, these ideas will get your pen moving on the page again.
Like everyone else, I have my moments when I’d rather be doing anything else besides writing. I get bored with my journaling routine and find myself searching for fresh inspiration. So how can you get excited about journaling again if you’ve hit a dead end?
Here are five of my favorite creative ways to hit the reset button on my daily practice.
Pull a Tarot card.
Although I’m far from an expert, I find tarot fascinating as a storytelling technique. Playing with tarot cards can be a fun way to break out of a writing funk.
Simply pull a card and describe the scene of the card. If you don’t have a physical deck of cards, try pulling one virtually on a site like Daily Tarot Draw. Before relying on their reading, meditate on what you think the card means to you.
There are 78 cards in a tarot deck. Each suit of the Minor Arcana represents an element. For example:
Swords = Air (communication, logic and reason)
Coins/Pentacles = Earth (physical/material)
Cups = Water (emotions)
Wands = Fire (creative inspiration)
The 21 Major Arcana cards represent the ancient archetypes, which symbolize universal symbols, images, and patterns of human behavior, which Carl Jung called the “collective unconscious.”
Here’s the card I pulled for this article if you'd like to experiment with this idea:
The 10 of Cups
When journaling about the card, observe the details and write down what comes up for you. There’s no right or wrong.
Describe the colors.
Describe the scene. What is the story you see in the scene?
Do you see this story as synchronistic to something going on in your own life right now? How so?
What do you think about the people/symbols portrayed on the card?
What feelings come up for you?
Is the number on the card meaningful to you in some way?
What elements do you think are represented in the card? What do those mean to you?
Is there something in the card that you desire or resist?
1 2At the end of this article, I’ll share how experts define the card and you can decide if it resonates with what you wrote or not.
If you’re a writer or creative and wish to dive deeper into tarot to support your writing practice, two of my favorite Tarot card books are Tarot for Writers by Corinne Kenner and The Creative Tarot by Jessa Crispin.
Bookshelf inspiration.
Open a book to a random page. Reflect on the words and then write your thoughts. Some of my favorite books to pull off my shelf for this exercise are Anne Lamont’s Bird by Bird, Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, Women Who Run with the Wolves by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and Cassandra Speaks: When Women are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes by Elizabeth Lesser.
Here’s the passage that I randomly opened to in Cassandra Speaks. In Lesser’s chapter “Power Stories,” she quotes, “If women are not perceived to be fully within the structures of power, surely it is power that we need to redefine rather than women.” ~Mary Beard.
Do these words resonate or not with you? Why or why not? Write about it.
Tap into the senses.
Write what you hear, see, smell, taste, touch and intuitively sense.
Right now, I see the vibrant greens of new spring leaves on the trees outside my studio window. I’m listening to thunder rumble in the ironclad sky while birds chirp feverishly to each other.
I’m touching my keyboard, which is as much my musical instrument as a piano is to a pianist. I love the feel of the keys clicking under my fingers as words pour and splatter across the page like the rain popping against the windows.
I can smell the soothing sage and cypress soy candle that my brother and sister-in-law gave me for my birthday and that I only burn when I’m writing.
I taste the refreshing, cool water from my drinking glass on my tongue.
All together, I intuit a sense of uninterrupted calm in my cozy studio. The moodiness of spring outside my window is a reflection of the changes happening in my life and in the collective. It’s also a reminder of how natural this cycle is even when it makes me feel a little uncertain, uncomfortable and anxious.
Your turn.
Channel.
Write down a question that’s been creating some conflict or tension in your life. Take a minute or two to meditate on the question.
Ask for divine guidance on the question. Then, begin writing whatever comes up. I consider these spiritual downloads, but you may be more comfortable thinking of this practice as stream-of-conscious writing. However you look at it, you may be surprised about what comes up for you.
Reflect on a meaningful object.
Look around your space. Write about something you own that’s particularly meaningful to you. Answer questions like:
Why is this important to me?
Where did it come from?
When did I receive it? How did it come into my life?
What was going on in my life at the time?
In what ways is this object relevant to my life now?
Or simply write about a found object. For example, I tend to often find feathers when I’m out on my walks. I love to look up the kind of feather it is if I’m not sure, and then check out Animal Speak by Ted Andrews to identify possible messages from nature. I then write these messages in my journal.
Read more about how journaling can benefit your health and wellbeing.
What are ways you get creative with your journaling practice? What are some of the challenges you have when it comes to journaling?
The card I pulled is from the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck.
The 10 of Cups definition, according to Tarot for Writers by Corrine Kenner, symbolizes a successful partnership, happy home. The family of four is significant because it symbolizes the four elements complementing each other. The stream symbolizes the river of life and “the bond of energy and emotion that links people in the real world too. The rainbow is a sign of the covenant, a sacred obligation.”
Love the idea of pulling a card. Journaling about Tarot readings has been SO HELPFUL LATELY. That's my favorite!