Scribe

Watch out, I'm going to write about you. Watch out, I'm going to write about you. You're going to write about me in your journal? Yes, I will.

Hey, guys.

Hey, good evening.

Thank you. I really look forward to the podcasting.

Thank you.

Well, you know, it's a funny thing to be a Gen Xer because to me, what? I don't even really think much about it, but I've started to because of the work that I've been doing. And one of the things that I think if any of you are Gen Xers, if you were in high school in the 80s, maybe that's that generation that has caught the tail ends of things, if you know what I mean. I learned to write thank you notes. I got cursive writing in grade school. I ate at little restaurants that old timers talk about. And I caught these places in their last couple of years. Even the professors I had in graduate school, I had a lot of them in their last years of teaching. So I think this is something that parallels this type of life is you catch the tail ends of long standing institutions, whether they're people or they're eateries or their modes of transportation or their manners, their ways of being. You caught the very tail end. And I am bringing this up because you're talking about broadcasting and etc. I love radio. And you'll see I write a lot about that too. In the blog there are themes that keep coming back. And I think when you've worked on something and you've been writing and journaling or any type of expressive work and you've been doing it long enough and you've been faithful to it and you've Stayed true to your own expression. Themes will keep coming back, and that's one of them, I guess.

Yeah, well, you know, actually it is in keeping, though. I don't want to take us off our track here. But the better talk programs that you're going to hear are not the political ones. They're going to be the ones that talk about just things, especially. Steve Lavallee was absolutely wonderful, and he retired a few years ago. He was also in Boston, and he was apolitical. And people just love to chat. Everyone's got something to say and a lot of nostalgia, a lot of reminiscences. Gene Burns used to say that his topic was. He would say the topic is the issues of the day. That can be anything. You see, that's what we're doing now.

Sure, sure. Consuming is. I had to check to see what you meant by that, but I think it's a good word. It's appropriate. When I taught photography, I used to tell the students that we are makers of images, just as we're consumers of images. So I remember that word. Excuse me. I think that the work from home thing means a lot of screen time, and I am working full time as an archivist, and I work with the public and I work with collections and. Excuse me. Sorry about that. In the midst of all of this, in the midst of the pandemic, I've really been turned to the collections, and it's all screen time, which can be tiring. And so my reading has kind of slowed down because I really find that I need to journal, just sit with the quiet and so on. But I'm also grateful that over the years, because you really can't go anywhere, though New England is in a bit better shape than most places. I'm grateful that I have been buying books here and there for the last half dozen years, because I'm getting around to reading them now. Here they are. You can't get to a library. So here I'm glad that I've collected some things. And right now I'm in the middle of the life story of Francisco Suarez, who was a Baroque era philosopher from Spain. And I Had read some of his work, but now I'm reading about his life and I find it extremely interesting. And it's making me really enjoy his other work, the work from his own hand, even more, because this is a biography written about him in 1940 and which is really during the war. So there's a little bit of a spin there on that. I read a biography a few months ago about San Juan de la Cruz, also of Spain, also a thinker, and it was written in Spain by a French author, and it was during World War II. It was really in the throes of it. It was in the early 40s, and there are a lot of little nuances in between the lines. It's written in French, and there's a kind of poetic style, but it's hard not to think that it was written in wartime. And the paper is like newsprint paper. It's very delicate. And so I'm consuming this, but slowly. And I tend to read with a pencil. I always take notes, and then I turn the notes into indexes. See, I'm an incurable librarian, and those notes that I take that turn into indices are like the breadcrumbs that are left in the woods so I can retrace my steps. Some things have warranted some heavy indexing because I found really, really great things that have really spoken to me, and I don't want to lose these sources. When, you know, when you go on to 10 books later, you'll say, what? What was that book? What did I see in it? But if you go back to your index, you know, it's annotated, and you could say, ah, that's where I saw this or that quote. You notice that in my blog, every essay is prefaced by a quote from something or someone. Maybe you've noticed this, and these are actually things that I have been reading and I've distilled these quotations down. Sometimes it's from manuscripts. These things are not published. And I like to give the reader the exact location of what I read. You know, what chapter? Where is this? So that you can go find this. Because I want people to be encouraged and to keep learning. See, this is also the incurable teacher

Well, you know, and then the thing is, you don't just put it down. This is your life. You know, you're immersed in it. The reading and the writing really go together. You see, they're all intertwined. And what I find, and maybe this is true for you and for others that are listening, that if you get to a block in your writing. You know you're writing the same thing over and over and over, that the writing starts to hit a standstill. It means you're not reading enough. And that has. I've tested this and I find that it works. Read more. If the writing doesn't, you're not happy with the writing, then you're asking about tools.

Asking about tools. Yes.

I know, it's wonderful. Bless your hearts. Bless your hearts. We could talk shop. I keep three parallel journals. I don't know if this is the place to bring this up.

Yes. Well, you know what I'll do? I'll tell you what they are and then you can ask your questions if you think it's appropriate now or appropriate later. But for years I have kept three parallel journals. They are separate because of what's being used. The pencil journal. The blog is named after this. I have that name before the blog. It's Jottings. It's thoughts. Quick, quick, just thoughts. Write a word down. It's your lunch break, you're on the subway. Write it down. Don't lose this thought. You get up at 2 o' clock in the morning and you don't want to lose that thought. So it's like a hold that thought book. And that's the graphite journal. And then when I have more time, I develop those thoughts and I use pen and ink and that's the second journal. And that's where I can put things into paragraphs and really develop them. The blog is really spinning out of the full out journals. And then I also keep a journal with a typewriter. I think that for stream of consciousness writing there's nothing like a mechanical, especially a portable because you can take it, take it around with you, take it outside. It's wireless. Look, there's a network printer. Isn't that amazing? Just put the paper and roll it in and start writing. But what it does is you cannot distract yourself. There's only one thing to do with a typewriter and it's write, write. And I use loose leaf paper. I like that. Levenger paper is disc bound and you roll it. I get the kind without the lines and make the investment. Get the puncher so you can punch your own paper. And you, you can get blank paper of any color you want. You put it in the typewriter and you just go to town and just write. You know, sometimes I'll just time myself and just write, just write. Don't stop, just go. And out of that will come essays. I'll look back at it, I'll mark it up. A lot of ideas have come from that. So those are the three parallel lines, the tools that I think Johnny had asked about, you know, in brief, in real brief. Not easy for me, but in real brief, what I will choose to use out of my arsenal, and maybe this happens with you too, is going to depend entirely on the paper that I'm working on or writing on, you know, the physical surface, the physical paper. If it's something like Moleskina, you know, and I'm writing in pencil, it's the graphite journal. I'm going to choose softer, softer pencils because that's a sort of a toothy kind of paper and that's going to work very well. And Johnny had sent me some Bugles, which I really like because they really fit the bill. And I have this Eagle drafting, very similar but older. And then these, these clutch fix pencils, which I use in archival work. They're just great. And I carry one around and it's always at the ready. And then the same with the pen and ink, you know, no lines. I just don't like lines. I think it probably says a lot about my personality. I don't need lines. There's enough structure. And I like these paper blanks, journals, because they make them without lines. Heaven help me. And again, if it's a fairly toothy paper, you can use finer points and then you can play with different inks. And then if it's a very glossy kind of paper, then you may want to use something a little bit broader. So it's, it's going to have to do with how the tools and the surface react.

It really is.

Awesome.

Yeah, no, but it's great.

Is that Gen Y?

so.

Not.

What's.

Look, all that matters is that you're writing. And that's the best.

You're Writing, Yeah, a lot of. Yeah, I didn't mean to be.

Or anything like that. Yeah, we do. We pursue what we like and that's a great thing.

I'm a lot.

Well, I teach this and so I, I want people to just write, you know, that's whatever you're using, you know, and you're, you're happy with it. You're getting these, your journals in the big box store. That's wonderful. You know, you save a lot of money. You know, paper blanks. That's. That's about a twenty dollar volume.

Yeah, Ridicule Graph. Oh, ouch. Oh, man.

All. Camus can do.

Except I said Camus.

Yes, it is. It's a lot of commitment, but it's a joy. It always is. And that's part of that propulsion, I suppose you could say. But this idea of graphite, which is what we put to paper when we write with our pencils, all our different tools that we like, and I've tried not to write much about the tools, but here they are and they deserve their due. When I thought about this and that, I didn't set out to keep a couple of journals at the same time. It's this idea that for me, at least for my creative process, it's a great thing to jot things down. It's a very low commitment thing. But you're preserving thoughts in just a few words and you can come back to them later. And that's really something that it's really developed along the way. And actually when I started to notice that I was doing that, that I would have a very small notebook, like a size of a field notes. And this molluskina that I'm writing in is the one that has the maps of Boston. And as the front matter, they make some for different cities is that it's something small, it's palm size. You can put it in your pocket so it's always there. And I had been on one of my many retreats in a monastery. I was actually in Taiz in France, and I was writing and writing with a pencil. And very discreetly, you can have it upright. There's not ink that's going to rush to the back of the device. Pencils are very, you know, gravity proof. And I would scratch little notes down, you know, the Reverend Prior would say something, and I'm thinking, oh, I've got to write this down. I've got to save this, you know, and I can write more about it later, you know, when I'm in better light and I've got my bigger journal, you know, and so that's the V on graphite and it's not Life in graphite. I would have changed the title, but it's graphite. It's life almost as Graphite. Which is to say that you can, you know, it's erasable, it's moldable. You could smudge a bowl. Think of the metaphors that go with that. And I would just do this, and this is before the blog, I would just do this. And I would. On a coffee break, you know, during the workday, I would try to settle my thoughts. Things can get rather frenetic. Just settle my thoughts. And at the top of one of those little, you know, 4 by 5 inch pages, something rather small, I would say graphite today. And it would be, you know, what are, what are the words that exemplify my thoughts to be revisited? You know, that's the idea.

And I decided to call the blog that because I felt like it was ephemeral, you know, The Internet, it's here. Then it's. Well, of course we hope that it's not. It doesn't disappear, especially if you've worked 14 years on the same blog. But it is something fleeting and it seemed to make sense. It seemed to be a good title and kind of a bilingual title. But to keep at it, well, that's not easy, especially as life makes all sorts of demands. I really enjoyed when I could write four essays a month, lots of short essays. I really, I miss doing that. But as it happens with any life, you get to all sorts of struggles and responsibilities and all kinds of things. And if I can just publish once a month, that's fine with me. There's no one cracking the whip if it isn't me. There's nobody doing that. And I do all the photography. That's my background, as you've heard. I went to art college and then I had this career in photography before I got into preservation and archives and libraries. But something that has me thinking about art school and maybe some of you went to art school. I'm not sure. I'm very much on the intuitive side of the brain and I love process. And I studied printmaking as well as photography and they were teaching us that tamarind style of printmaking where you have this reverence for the process, the steps. What does it take to ink that plate? You know, it's a process. There's a sequence. First you do this, then you do that, and you're not jumping over things, you're not rushing through the process to get to your finished print. And I think that writing in the way that we write and keeping a journal, it's an appreciation and a reverence for the process. You're putting words down, they're coming from your imagination and your perception. You're looking at things, you're an observer, and here it is. You're putting it down in your own way. I think that built into that, and you see it in the blog, there's a lot about that process.

Sort of, yeah.

Yes, journaling isn't really a word, you know, grammatically and. But we use that word. And there was actually a periodical, I think, writer's Digest had something. It was called personal journaling. Maybe you've seen this. It had a short life. But I've actually used those back issues to teach out of keeping a journal, writing a journal. It's actually journal writing. Maybe that's a better grammatical thing to say. It's like professional archivists don't say archiving, you know, would be like saying, would you library that book for me? No, no, no, no.

Archive. Archive. Not to get off the track, because that could be for another topic, and I hope it will be. An archive is a noun. It's not a verb. In the same way that library is a noun, not a verb. And what you do is you organize your archives. You probably process them, and now we're back to process. But journaling, keeping a journal, this is to say. And actually the translating the French for that, because journal is a newspaper, I think, you know, they say intimate journal. That's how it translates. And that's the expression that's used for what we call like a diary or a journalist journal. It's to say that you are doing this thing of noting down thoughts that would be like the graphite journal, and then also developing them. You can also do that. And that's what I do with the pen and ink thing or the stream of consciousness, which is what I do with the typewriter. But there isn't one way to keep a journal, and that's really important, and it's a very liberating thing. And I find that the students really appreciate that. But when we say journaling, we're really saying that you are keeping your own chronicle. And it is something that could only come from you. It is the first person. It is some form or another of your expression based on what you see. And so when we say, I keep a journal in a very loose sense, because there are styles of doing this and tools and manners and ways, but it is in some form or another, it is an expression of your observation of your own life in the first person.

Please don't say, archive this for me. Don't library that book.

Well, I think sort of like when you look at archival photographs, for example, there is great value in the commonplace. Don't you love looking at street photographs or people in a diner and you can tell it's at night because the windows are blackened? Like, don't you love that it's the commonplace? You know, someone is slumped over a table and there's the cup of coffee and heavy ceramic, you know, think about. And it's got the price board, you know, above their heads. Value is really.

Yes, the commonplace. There's a lot to be said for that. And I started journaling in a time of real crisis, personal crisis. There were deaths in my family. It was a very difficult time. And I didn't even think of writing in a journal. It's like the world came crashing down at my job and in every, every. At every turn. And I decided to take some time and just back away from things. I had been working long, long weeks. This is when I was still in the photo field and I was listening to music in the dark room, you know, it was music from the Weston Priory, which is the Benedictine community that's in Vermont. And during a really difficult time because I was having trouble just even staying on the beam and doing my job, and I asked for some days off and I looked at my. Like we were talking about looking at the radio, I looked at my stereo with that music on and I thought, I'm gonna. I'm go where this music is. I'm going to find out where it came from. I'm going to go to this place because it's about three and a half hours drive from here. And I went to Vermont and one of my co workers gave Me, a blank book. And she said, take this with you. It sounds like you're going to need this. And I looked at her and I said, I don't keep diaries. She said, take it with you. And I took it with me. And I started to write in it and write in it and write in it. And I found this place. I found the Weston Priory. I've been going there now for 25 years. I even lived there for a time in 1999. It has meant a tremendous amount to me. And you can look on the blog and you can see a lot of pictures and a lot of things that I've learned there. It's almost like learning how to live life, just living alongside these Benedictines brothers. But the journaling began there. And yes, it was a time of crisis. And then I had to fly back to Paris. I had to go to a funeral. It was very difficult. I had that little journal with me, and I got another one and I was in Europe. And the writing just hasn't stopped. It's been going on since. And it doesn't have to be a crisis is what I'm really getting at. There's the commonplace that has enormous value. This is, in fact, it's a really great thing. If you have the time and you think about it and it fascinates you. Write it down. What does a cup of coffee cost right now? And then you're going to look at it in 20 years, you're going to say, oh, my goodness, $36.

Look at that. It's amazing. With inflation, maybe there's a blizzard and it's keeping you home and you've got, I live in Maine. There's a blizzard and it's keeping you home. And you want to write something about that. And what do things look like? And can you smell that it's going to snow? Because I can. And a lot of us here can write about it, put it down. It's the commonplace. But it's tremendous. The pandemic, of course, it just slammed us in such short notice. It just happened like that. And I even went back and looked at the journal I kept after September 11th. I didn't write anything until September 18th. And I was sitting on the docks of Belfast harbor in Maine, and I started to write about it because it just stunned all of us. And I'll just say this, and then I want to respect your time. It's an interesting thing. If you do keep a journal, if you do write in a journal, look, look at your journal entries from February, it's before the plague. Look at the things you were writing about. Even look at the photos on your camera, maybe. Or look at the things that were occupying your thoughts. There again is a definition of what journal writing is. It's very, very interesting to go back and to look and to say, oh, this is what I was thinking about. Oh, this is what was eating me. And now you look at this. Things have changed so much so quickly.

Yes, yes to all these things. I created a curriculum and a monthly program. I've been doing that for five years. I've also taught workshops and that predates this journaling program that I do. The wonderful thing about it is, is what happens around the journaling. It's that there are a lot of teaching and learning opportunities for the poets and the playwrights and the Novel Writing Month. What about the essayists? You know, what about the essayists? Because that's really what journaling is. I didn't find there was anything and I was calling around and looking at meetups and different things in schools and law and I didn't see anything like that. And so I thought I would try it. And I created this program and what I do is I write lesson plans and I create journaling prompts and I'd be happy to send these to you if you're interested. Yeah, definitely. And the important thing is I love an open ended question. I also teach philosophy and I know Johnny knows this. And the more open ended, the more the recipient of those words can own the concept, they can make it their own. So we'll just stick to journaling for the moment. I usually use a theme. For example, my group was invited to hold its class, its meeting in a hotel lobby. And the reason for that is it's a hotel in Portland in which the building that they're in used to be the headquarters of a newspaper. And so they have kept the themes going about printing presses and so on. And I held a type in there. Actually I was part of a. Actually it was a typewriter repairman in Cambridge and I, we led this. We had people writing, bringing in their typewriters, we writing and I was using prompts and so on. And as a thank you gesture. The hotel said, look, bring your class here, have your journaling class here, and we'll invite hotel guests to join you. And I thought, well, this is great. And so I'm giving you this example simply to say that the theme that evening was travel, you know, going places. Even though we all were, you know, people that lived in the, you know, in Maine, in the Portland area, and we were guests in this hotel, but we had people with us who were not from the area and we were writing about. For example, one of the prompts was, you wake up in the morning and the room is unfamiliar, but your things are draped over the chair next to you. And then write and we time it. And these prompts are timed, but they're supposed to be. And I make them that way. Very open ended. And what I do are open prompts and closed prompts. An open prompt is that the people who write are invited to read from what they have. And I always say, you're invited but not obliged because this is personal writing and I don't want anyone to feel on the spot. But people love to air their work. This is true. I do too. I've read some of those essays you see on IBM blog. I've read some of them to audiences and I've picked a few out that I think would resonate and I've actually used them as public readings, like an open mic. And I would bring some printed things from the blog. But the close prompt is something that is really meant for the journal writer themselves and they should feel completely free to write what they want. And that's the part of every workshop that I call. For your eyes only. Okay? For your eyes only. You're going to spend 15 minutes and you're going to write about. And I give them a prompt and I'll just say go. And I have a timer. This has been enormously popular. People just love it. And as I said, the things that happen around the workshops are the friendships. And we do check in on each other and we've kept it going using Jitsi, and I'm here at my dining table and everyone is in their apartments and so on. And we are doing this. We have the open and the closed prompts. I read to the group the last meeting we had ended at midnight. You know, I called it right night and it was very well received, but it was, it had to be for night owls, really. People that had to get to work the next morning early, couldn't make it. And so I don't think I'll do do this too much. But I want people to feel encouraged to write. Shouldn't worry about what it looks like, the grammar, the mechanics, you know, just don't say archiving, all right? It's a noun, not a verb. But the important thing, you know, is that you're writing, you're expressing, you're putting words together, you're putting it out there. Some of the people in the group have published, which I think is just great. It's fantastic. You know, I will aid and abet the process, you know, because I want this to be a source of encouragement. And when it is that way, and it was like that when I was an art teacher, people are going to continue. If they've had a good time, they're going to continue. If you have a good time with your writing, with your journal writing, you will do it, you will continue. And when things start to feel a little bit dry, you might just decide to change where you're writing or what you're writing with, or pick up a book and find some momentum and then you're back on the writing beam again.

Preserve it.

Or preservation. Archivists would say it's preservation. One of the things that happens is that when you're doing things digitally, it's sort of similar to digital imaging. What's the original? What's the original? And how can you tell? And how can you tell that original hasn't been gotten back into and edited and changed and so on? And when you're looking at a handwritten manuscript, you can tell, you can tell this is done by hand, this is the original. You can see maybe things were crossed out, things were changed. You have a second version, a third version. So when it comes to preservation of born digital items, that's something that crosses a lot of archivists minds. Yeah, but I think that again, if it's personal writing, you are, are, you are putting Your voice out there.

Yes, yes. Well, this. This. This is segueing us into that other.

But it's. Yeah, no, it's fine. And I would love to do this, and you just tell me when. But I think, suffice it to say, because I want to. To respect your. Your. Your. Your wonderful question and these points that you're making. When you're an archivist and you're at the receiving end, someone will call or they'll show up and they'll say, I want to give my personal papers to this library or this university, because I went there, or my grandfather went to this university, and I have his papers, and I want you to have them, because I want them to be preserved and I want them to be used for scholarly purposes. So those things do come up. And preservation. Part of that is that idea of custodianship of those manuscripts. You know, Ansel Adams's photographs, the ones that he actually printed himself, they're in Rochester. They're at that Museum of Photography. So you can actually see the prints that he made, or Paul Strand's prints. You can. You can see them. And printing is a very expressive thing, but it's important that they are in a place like that where we can go see them and they didn't get thrown away.

Yeah.

We think about these things because. No, these are great things to bring up. And it just shows you that the idea of the archival. It's always with us. Do I save this? How should I save this? Where do I save this? I'm keeping a journal. I want. Want this to. I'm going to put these journals in a, in a tote or I'm going to put them in a strong box or something. So you're, you're. We're. We are really thinking about this. And, and that's a good thing.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, great questions. And there are a few questions rolled up into, into your, into your one broad question.

Some specifics.

And it shows. Oh, it does. No, it's wonderful. This is great. It's talking shop. It's just great. True to what I say to the groups that I teach and the people I try to encourage, and even in the blog, there is something of that in there. It should never feel forced. You're writing because you need to. You want to. It's something you want to do. And I think this group will appreciate this. People ask about pencils and pens and notebooks and so on. And there was one evening I did a clinic about how to fill and clean a fountain pen because people ask, who's going to show you? Who's going to show you? People want to know. And what I say is, don't feel like just like journalists, there isn't one way. But get a book, a blank book and tools that make you want to write. You know, maybe it's that Edelweiss pencil. Maybe it's that, you know, it makes you want to write. Maybe it's that notebook that opens with the spine on the top instead of the side. It makes you want to write. So write makes you want to write. It's great. You know, it's going to be different. It's going to be very personal. How often you asked again, it's not something that I set out to do me that doesn't like lines. But what generally happens is I wake up very early. I live in a building that's about 170 years old. So it's a hot bath, everybody morning, and that means you have to dry

and, you know, the. The coffee and, you know, waking up. It's a. Some of it is learned from the monastic life, but journaling fits right into that. You know, I'm beginning the day. I'm a clean slate. I. I have not turned on the computer. I am not about to, as I like to say, slide down the chute into the workday. And that's a great time to write some thoughts down. It's never for a long period of time because I start to think ahead. I start to think of prep and so on. But that's a really opportune time to write. For me, at least. It's first thing in the morning. Before the world turned upside down, it was lunch hour. And I always called it scribbling and nibbling because it's half scribbling and half nibbling. In fact, it's more scribbling than nibbling.

in the middle of scribbling. And everyone is used to this. You know, I work downtown, and I see the same people over and over, and they see me with that journal and the pencil, and they say, oh, there you go. You never stop. It's a funny thing about living in a small town. You know, Portland is only 67,000 people. I feel like I know most of them, or I've helped most of them. It's kind of sweet. You know, people will, you know, if you're at an outdoor cafe or something, and there you are with your little notebook and your pencil, and people just look and they grin and they nod. I cherish that. And I've written about this, too. So lunch hour has been a good time. And also it's a way to blow off a little bit of steam. You know, I've gone to a meeting and I found it completely inept, and I've decided to write about it. You know, it's like, watch out, I'm going to write about you. Watch out, I'm going to write about you. You're going to write about me in your journal? Yes, I will. Will. And there you go. And then at nighttime. See, look at some morning, noon and night, almost. It almost is. Sometimes night is really great because the day has run its course and you've decided to close the day. I don't always do this, but a lot of the times I will do this. And that's again, going back to where you asked about. The value of journaling is that you are making sense of the world and you're putting some words down and you're just doing it. It's a very safe place. You can make fun of people. You can say, that meeting was ridiculous. I can't believe what so and so said. Write it down. It's the safest place to do this. Otherwise, you know, loose lips could sink ships. And you don't have to watch your language if you, you know, or something else. You know, it can be a flight of fancy. You know, this reminds me of something someone said to me in third grade. What did they say? Write it down. Write it down, because you'll lose it if you don't. Yeah, yeah.

are always flowing, as you can hear. They're, they're.

Yeah, I get this a lot. People that will come to me and say, oh, I'd like to join your group, but I have never done this. And I say, oh, good, you've never done this. Let me get you. I've given out field notes notebooks. You remember they did the county fairs?

Do you remember that? I bought several dozen state of Maine field notes books. And I give those out, you know, because it's the COVID matter, has all sorts of things about Maine, and people really love it because it's like, oh, look at this. Oh, and I get to write in this, too. It's blank. So it's the perfect combination. It's really for them. It's like, ah, it's my home state. It can be a little intimidating. And it reminds me of when I was in my first year in art College, and you had your big 20 by 30 sketchpad. And you know, there are objects that you have to draw, or there's a model standing on a pedestal, and you're looking at that big, blank white piece of paper, and you've got a piece of charcoal in your hand, and it's like, where do I even begin? It's a lot like that. And I had a drawing teacher that had us start by drawing the shadows and build out from the shadows. It's very interesting. And we did it in charcoal, and we did it in watercolor also. We began with the shadows and we started. We ended up with the highlights. It's a very interesting way to work. It's this almost sort of additive and subtractive process at the same time. So when it comes to writing, someone says, oh, I'm not a writer, you

Yes, that's what you say. Because you have an imagination and you're looking at things your own way. And those prompts are a huge help. Maybe you know the book called Writing down the Bones? Yeah, it's a good book by Natalie Goldberg. It's got to be the best book about journalism. It is just great because she doesn't tell you how to journal, doesn't tell you what to do. But there's something about those short essays that get the wheels turning. And she has what she calls her homemade no quit prompt, that at the top of a piece of paper, it's kind of like the big sketch pad. She writes the words I remember. And, wow, does that get the writing going. I have one that I made up, and I've referred to it a lot in the blog. I caught myself doing this in my journal. I would say, I heard myself say. Because it's a funny thing if you're your own observer. You hear yourself say things again at those terrible meetings, or you're chatting with someone on the street, or you've heard yourself say something and it's stuck to you. It's like, this is what I really think. Really, this is what I saw. So it's. I heard myself say, and the pencil starts flying. And I think that for someone who wants to get started and they feel a little intimidated, you could start with write what you see, write where you are, what's in front of you, what are you thinking about, what's stuck in your throat, and you feel like you need to write it down, and things start to follow. And I think it's good that someone who has never done this before knows it's good. That they know that there are no rules. There are really no rules. You can draw in that thing. You can turn it the other way if you want to, and write the long way. You can start out by copying some quotes down. I think that was your commonplace. Write some things down, take some notes, go to a museum exhibit. And some things you're gonna hear actually look at the people that are at these openings. Of course, this is before the plague. It's very interesting to watch people and how they stand in front of artworks. It's very interesting. But the world is filled with material and I try to encourage people along those lines. There's material all around us.

Yes, absolutely. I led off one of these recent workshops. Usually the first prompt is an open prompt, and I make it very open ended. And recently I just said, what gets under your skin these days?

And I just saw everyone just, yeah. What gets under your skin these days? Next week it's Monday is World Gratitude Day. Did you know there was a World Gratitude Day? I just saw this and I thought,

I am leading an Bravo. Aren't you thankful that there is such a day? Because speaking about this as it relates to archives, I am helping a statewide initiative to collect anecdotes from the public about the pandemic in Maine. And I mentioned I'm using an Omeka platform and it's done through the Maine State Library. And I'm leading an effort to collect in the Portland area, which, which is in Southern Maine. And there are people in Bangor and there are people in Lewiston and people in Biddeford, and they're doing something. We're all networked together. But I write the prompts for this, and they get spread around the state. And so for this, I said, well, in light of the fact that we have this World Gratitude Day, what has been the source of your gratitude during these times? You know, question mark, go. And we'll start to collect things next week. We'll see what people say, what people submit to these projects.

But the prompts are. See, I'm doing what I do with those classes, but now it's broadcast around the state, you know, through these prompts. And there's a Facebook page, it's called Main during COVID And you would see those prompts I'm writing because we put them there too, and it's a way for me to help other communities. And the prompts provide a little bit of a guideline, but it's never, this is what you need to write. This is how you need to do it. No, here's a concept. You know, it's gratitude, or it's what gets under your skin. Take that and run with it and see what happens and just go. And I think that the writing seems to generate more writing. It's really like. It's like art. It's like any art medium. You know, you jump in and you get going. Whether it's drawing or it's photography or it's sculpture, you just get going. Just get started and just write. Just do your thing and you will arrive at your style and you will arrive at your method.

You mean the Main During COVID or

Of course, I could send you the list of prompts because I've been doing these since, I think, the end of May. We had a drive, a kind of collecting drive. You know, we were building something around the fourth of July and, you know, asking people to reflect because it is so different. Right? No cookouts. You know, you know this because you're. You're in different parts of the country and you're. You're. You're contending with the same things. But I could send you the list if you like, John. You just pick from the. That you like. But it is getting people writing and it's nice to hear that libraries in different parts of this state are turning those prompts into little flyers and into mailings and bookmarks. They're dropping them into the curbside pickups. Isn't that sweet? And the idea is you're blending in writing with reading. I think they're inextricable. Yeah. And if you're not happy with your writing, then you're not reading enough.

Yes.

I really think that's it. You know, I care for and feed that La Vie Graphite blog. And you're so kind to share that. I've contributed to some other things, but it's not with the steadiness of that. So I think that's really the place. Yeah.

But thank you. This, this has just been great. And, and it's just, it's always great to chat with kindred spirits. Yeah.

That's cause for gratitude, isn't it?

And please write in your journals. Do you like our podcast?