The Journey Planner
On January 25, I invited members of my WriteSPACE community to join me for a special event, the launch of my new diagnostic survey: The Journey Planner.
In the first hour of this exclusive WriteSPACE Special Event, I encouraged the writers to answer a series of reflective writing questions and to take two of my diagnostic tools. In the second hour, we discussed their individual goals for establishing healthy and happy writing habits.
Here’s WriteSPACE Event Manager Amy Lewis’ personal account of the live event:
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This Special Event featuring Helen’s new Journey Planner test offered a chance to reflect on our writing goals for the year.
Helen’s new survey is a great way to identify your writing roadblocks, fill up on your personal rocket fuel (e.g. your strengths and passions as a writer), and chart an ambitious but achievable path to better writing this year. In small groups, Helen was able to offer individual feedback and coaching to help each of us refine our itineraries.
It’s not too late to take the survey, you too can take steps towards designing a plan of action for your writing this year.
Go to the Maproom page in your account. Under the intro paragraph, you will find a link to ‘Try our Journey Planner!’
Complete and submit the Journey Planner Survey, including your results for The Writing BASE and The Roadblock Quiz. Helen will read your answers and will offer personalised advice for you to hone and achieve your goals through a video. I will also be able to send you some resources and a PDF with some writing prompts to explore your plan abstractly and/or creatively.
In fact, why not try the same exercise that Helen coached us through during this Special Event? Grab yourself a notebook and a pen, and find a comfy spot. Take 10 minutes to draw or mind-map your writing goals for each of the following areas:
Style
Creativity
Community
Productivity
Pleasure and play
How important are each of these aspects in your yearly plan for your writing? Think about their relative size, texture, shape, colour, and symbolism. See what unfolds on the page…
My personal goals for the year involve unblocking my creative writing and nourishing the vitality of my everyday writing practice. It struck me during this exercise that, much like a healthy diet involves different food groups, a healthy writing practice should also be rich in diverse nutrients. Each of the 5 aspects listed above became a fruit on my plate. Style became a huge grapefruit, not only enormously important to me but sharp and unique in its flavour. Creativity became a wonky pear to represent creative innovation in my work. Community became an apple already partly munched (with thanks to the WriteSPACE community). Productivity was a long banana that stretched into longer and longer stints of daily writing. And pleasure became a strawberry, the smallest of all the fruits on the plate, but potentially the juiciest. I’m reminded of a great interview conducted by celebrity chef Paul Hollywood of the world’s most delicious and expensive strawberries, sold by a humble farmer in Japan. With the right sunlight, warmth and care, those Japanese strawberries could grow to enormous sizes. Similarly, with the right SPACE, my writing practice can become as delicious and richly textured as a fruit salad this year.
If you would like to share your Journey planner sketch/ mind map with us, feel free to submit it via the SPACE Gallery page.
Thank you to Helen for guiding us through this new tool, and thank you to all the writeSPACE members who attended. I look forward to seeing some of you again at the Open Beach House Special Event.
See you again soon!
This Special Event was exclusive to WriteSPACE and WS Studio members.
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