Monday's Challenge - Journaling + Storytelling

Good morning!  Cara here.  Excited for our first journaling challenge?  No?  Don’t worry!  Journaling doesn’t have to be long, or hard, or complicated.  It just needs to be real and it needs to be YOU.

I love journaling, but I know many scrappers struggle with the topic.  What do I say?  How much do I write?  Is anyone going to read this junk anyway?   It’s totally okay to not love journaling, but it IS an important part of telling your story through scrapbooking.

And that’s exactly what we’re going to focus on this month – storytelling.  We’re going to try a very simple journaling technique, one you probably use over + over every day without even realizing it. 

Think about it.  Don’t you already do this?  When someone asks how your day went, you tell them, right?  And when’s the last time you shared a cute story about one of your kids, or a pet, or the crazy thing you’re sister did that you STILL can’t believe she got away with?  I’m guessing probably pretty recently.

By the way, the Golden Rule kit is a journaler’s DREAM!  Did you notice all the lined papers in this kit?  Patterned papers!  With lines!  Right on the paper!  I know I love using these as the basis for my journaling, how about you?

For our scrapbooking, sometimes it's easier to break our stories into little chunks.  Most good stories have three things – a beginning, a middle, and an end.  (See?  I told you this would be simple!)   We’re going to work through each one and tell a quick little story for your next layout.

The beginning – Here’s where you want to draw the reader into your story.  The hook, if you will.  In my first example, I wanted to tell the story of Henry’s push-ups.  I brainstormed for a bit about how to start, coming up with several introductions that I thought might work.  I keep a spiral notebook on my desk at all times to jot down journaling + layout ideas.  It's easier for me to write out my journaling before I try to actually put it on my project.

I liked this journaling option best:

    "For so long, Henry was just totally content to lay on the floor.  No wiggling, no movement, and definitely no attempts at crawling."

I think this grabs your attention and makes you want to know what he's doing now.

Repeat for “the middle.”  This is really the meat of your story.  Ask yourself the following questions:

• What happened?
• Why did I find it cute/funny/sad/etc?
• Did something occur differently than/the same as what I expected?

Here's my middle:

"Then one day, I catch him doing this. -->  Yes, that is a full push-up.  Baby style.  Once he realized how impressive we found his moves, he started doing it more and more.  He loved our claps and shouts of, 'Yay, Henry!'"

My "middle" does a good job of explaining the pictures, and why I'm scrapbooking this moment.

Almost done!  For “the end,” try and sum up your story in a sentence or two.  Here’s a few ideas for nice conclusions to your story:

• Why do I want to remember this?
• What happened when activity/event was over?
• Can I add anything new that summarizes the story nicely?

And here’s my “end”:

We're seeing fewer + fewer push-ups as he moves toward actual forward movement, but I will always remember how "strong" he was.  Even if he was just doing it for the applause :)

I summarized what I want to remember, and even set myself up for a future page about his crawling.

An easy way to scrap "beginning, middle, end" is to use three photos, like I did for this "Showing Off" layout and for my "Baby-Sitting" project. 

Another fun way to seperate the chunks of your story would be to use 3 different journaling spots.  I used the fun Jillibean Soup Sprouts in this layout about my mom.

Keep in mind, not every story is going to be super interesting (or seem super important) right now.  But in 10 years or so, IT WILL BE.  All parts of your life, both big + small, deserve some spotlight time in your scrapbooks.  Every story is important.

MONDAY'S CHALLENGE:

So, here’s your challenge.  Write a story.  Start with “once upon a time,” or just give us a recap of your day.  It can be as long or as short as you need it to be.  It DOES need to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

The RULES:

--the project does not need to use a CC Monthy Kit
--the project must be uploaded to the 'Monday's Challenge' category in the CC Gallery
--put the name of the challenge in your title
--post a link of that project from the CC Gallery into the thread for that challenge on the Message Board

--the challenge will be due by midnight MST October 31, 2010  and the winner announced on the CC Blog November 2, 2010

I can't wait to read everyone's stories.  Happy journaling :)

Comments

[AmyBug]

Great challenge. I like your examples, Cara.

[Linda]

I love to journal and this is a great tutorial to help people get started!

[Lisa Cole]

We must be having a SERIOUS esp thing going on right now Cara.. because I have a layout sitting on my desk with the exact same papers, in the exact format of your layout, waiting for meaningful journaling. Wow.