Guest blogger Preslaysa Williams and "Writing My Life"

Blissful Life Journey welcomes guest Preslaysa Williams on the importance of journaling your life's journey. She is also offering a giveaway! See below for details on how to enter!

"Writing My Life"

Since becoming a mother…or maybe since hitting the big 3-0, I’ve been pondering death. Not in a morbid way but in an “Oh my gosh, I’m getting older and before I know it my body will hit the dirt, my spirit will rest in Jesus and sometime after that I’ll stand before God to give an account for what I’ve done with the time He’s allotted me” way.

I can be intense sometimes.

To deal with my not quite mid-life crisis, I’ve started to track my life. I take pictures. I recorded my daily activity in journals: foods I eat, times I exercise, pages I write, prayers I send up to God. Journaling allows me to get all of that mental intensity out of my brain and onto the page. However, after a few months, journaling became too cumbersome and disorganized. My entries were written in multiple notebooks and scattered throughout my house. Journaling became messy, and I eventually stopped.

So after accepting the fact I’m a left brained, creative person (go figure), I started searching for a simple way to journal. Now, I keep one journal (not five!) and it records my daily prayers and Bible reading, a simple daily ‘to do’ list and my goals for the year. I found a way to systemically keep track of all this life that passes through my fingers via seconds, minutes, hours, and days. The fact that it’s a blank journal is key. I can divide it in whatever way I want.

You can do this too. Never underestimate the power of a blank notebook. In it, you can record your life in all of its beautiful intricacies. And because it’s your journal, you can make it into anything you want…

Question for You: How do you record your sojourning on this earth?

Fun Giveaway: One lucky blog commenter will win a brand new Moleskine journal. Winner announced on February 1^st. Please leave your comment where it says "Post a Comment."

Preslaysa Williams is a wife, mom and writer. When she’s not rebooting the laundry or chasing around her toddler, you can find her typing away on her laptop. Visit her online where she blogs three times a week about her three favorite things: Faith, Family and Fiction.

 

I Have No Idea What to Write...

I have no idea what to write today on my blog. This is what is running through my mind as I sit here.

Usually I've had some momentous writing experience to detail in my blog for the week. Instead I spent time recounting some interesting experiences on my hike this past weekend, which I detail in my hiking blog. Perhaps that is to be my spiritual gauge for this week. The importance of blogs. Writing blogs. Blogs of every shape and size. Blogs that deal with your interests. Blogs that help you with your writing, whether they be one of inspirational content, a blog of personal interests, or a blog reviewing books and even other blogs. But they have one thing in common. They help you with your writing technique, exercising your gift, if you will, as you chronicle your journey and bring your thoughts into focus. I know many have advocated the idea of journaling as a way for writers to exercise their craft. Blogging makes that journaling come to life via the Internet - providing a place of unique publication where others can share in your words.

For me as a fiction author, it's not just writing novels, but also bringing my inner thoughts to life. To work on creating that nonfiction aspect of my career as well. Blogging has helped me do just that. From the online journal I kept when I hiked the Appalachian Trail last year with my son (and is now useful for creating my nonfiction book about the journey), to my current hiking blog that details trail experiences or even thoughts leading up to a 30 year dream come true (like the hike last year), to this blog chronicling writing ideas, they all serve an important purpose for me as a writer and you as the reader. And they are an important avenue of my writing ministry.

Hey, guess what? I found something to write about after all!