First of all, I often become too intense when I journal. Sometimes it's easier for me to be serious then to write fun entries. There's always a season to journal about serious topics. I am going to introduce one simple way to have fun when you journal.

Create Your Persona:  Create a whole new personality, a person who has all of your favorite character traits, mannerisms and work skills. To avoid boredom, make sure that your persona is interesting to you.

Picture Your Persona: Remember that this is symbol for this persona, draw a simple image. You can use this symbol when you write entries or you may just use your persona's initials.

Give Your Persona A Backstory:  Write a three sentence history of your persona, so you can differentiate this persona from other people that you might write about in the future.  Stop, reread your three sentences and add any extra details in a fourth sentence.

Chat With Your Persona:  Practice journaling with your persona, using letters, sharing pictures, and doodles. To enhance your entries, experiment using colored pens, crayons and other materials.

Reread Your Entries:  Finally, after you finish your first dialogue, stop and reread your conversation(s).  What surprised you? What bothered you? What do you want to repeat in future conversations? Do you want to continue chatting with your current persona? Do you want to create new persona? Did you have fun with this exercise? If not, what could you do to increase the fun potential with your next persona?

Feel free to experiment with this exercise at least one more time, before you move on to another technique.  Enjoy creating and interacting with other parts of yourself!!

Copyright 2005 Writer's Eye Advisory Service

Lael Johnson

Contact Information: Ms. Lael Johnson P.O. Box 2405 Culver City, CA 90231 Journallady2001@yahoo.com 310-649-5543

Lael Johnson is the owner of Writer's Eye Advisory Service. She has a varied background in history, marketing management, psychology, community service and facilities management. She is also a trained creativity coach, writer and beader. She owns Creations Beadwork, selling handcrafted jewelry at craft shows and other community events. She is a published author whose writing interests include: haiku and related forms, devotional and inspirational material, short stories, essays, children's stories, volunteering, journaling and lyrics. She's published in inspirational material in the Vineyard Voice, Single Spirit and Children's Bible Search. She is also a published poet in Makar, Frogpond and Woodnotes. She edited copy for the Vineyard Voice, edited the weekly church prayer bulletin for four years, and edited and published the National Journal Network newsletter for six years. She's completed one basic course in children's writing from the Institute of Children's Literature.

She is currently completing several email and teleclasses in creativity coaching and small business topics. She is a member of Cassell Network of Writers, International Women Writer's Guild, and California Lawyers for the Arts (artist member only), respectively. She also participates in several other niche writing organizations. Currently she welcomes creativity coaching clients, using journaling and other resources, to help artists, small business owners and people eager to expand their creativity skills. She's authored several articles on creativity coaching and other relevant topics. She can be reached by email.

She is a member of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship Westside. She currently resides in Culver City, CA. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, writing and listening to classical, Celtic and international folk music and taking care of her two companion parakeets.