Arts & Entertainment, Writing
Journals: Observing the World
Lesson time 16:43 min
Journaling is a tried-and-true method for self-expression and discovering your voice. For illustration, Joyce reads from one of Virginia Woolf’s diary entries.
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Topics include: Sharpen Your Power of Observation · Write at Odd Hours · Capture Your Daydreams · Make Checklists of Details · From A Writer's Diary by Virginia Woolf · Assignment: Write a “Moment of Being”
Teaches the Art of the Short Story
Literary legend Joyce Carol Oates teaches you how to write short stories by developing your voice and exploring classic works of fiction.
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[MUSIC PLAYING] - Artists usually resist analyzing themselves, but I've really found that there are some predominant motives for writing that really have guided me through my life. One motive for writing is self-expression. And maybe that's one of the most original. It's the self that you're expressing when you write in a diary. And I always encourage my students to keep a journal. I think we all need to keep journals. To write quietly and calmly at the end of the day, before you go to bed, to write in a journal. If you can write longhand, that's really nice, because it's so intimate and so private. And to keep in contact with your innermost self. So this self-expression in a journal could turn into a work of art. [MUSIC PLAYING] I've kept a journal since I've been about 21 years old. Before that, I had a diary sporadically. Then I started keeping a journal, which was just immensely helpful. The journal is helpful in ways that you can't anticipate, because when you're traveling particularly, you're moving so swiftly through space and time that you don't really have time to absorb very much. So whatever you can write down in a journal that's descriptive-- it doesn't have to be elegant writing. Lots of dashes and breathless writing is really best to take notes very quickly, impressionistically, describing places and your own reactions to the places. And if you can put a little dialogue in, some exchanges you've had with people. Well, keeping a journal sharpens our senses. It's like an exercise in writing. If you're describing a scene, you are practicing the act of writing, which is very important, and thinking in language. Otherwise, you just sort of go through the day. The stray thoughts are floating around in your head of no particular distinction. But if you're writing things down and really thinking about something and observing, that gives a certain sharpness to your powers of observation. As time goes by, when you look back over those entries that had seemed so ordinary, they become really interesting to look back at, like, 15 or 17, 20 years. Some people can look back 40 years. Like looking back through a tunnel into the depths of time. It is so interesting. But as I said, you can't anticipate how important it will be when you're doing it, because you're just caught up in the moment. So you have to have faith that sometime in the future, you'll look back upon this really, really interesting. [MUSIC PLAYING] The kind of writing people do when they don't have time is also important. So I suggest to my students, you start writing when you only have 40 minutes, and write really, really fast. So you don't have time. Like, you have eight hours, you're intimidated. It's too much time. Well, I could also say that writing when you're feeling very tired is a good idea. Writing when you've been up late, writing when you're ready to go to bed and you're really, really tired, or you're feverish or not f...
About the Instructor
The author of some of the most enduring fiction of our time, Joyce Carol Oates has published 58 novels and thousands of short stories, essays, and articles. Now the award-winning author and Princeton University creative writing professor teaches you how to tap into your storytelling instincts. Find ideas from your own experiences and perceptions, experiment with structure, and improve your craft, one sentence at a time.
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Joyce Carol Oates
Literary legend Joyce Carol Oates teaches you how to write short stories by developing your voice and exploring classic works of fiction.
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