These materials are meant to be supplementary to the 30-minute video available at the Facebook page of Arts in Stark, the sponsoring organization, and of Diane Kendig, the author.
We are thinking that this period of "Sheltering in Place" is a historic time that we might all use to create our own record. Let us be the Samuel Pepyses of COVID-19!!
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email her at dianekendig (at) gmail (dot) com.
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| Photo Credit: Lisa Nardi |
Writing Exercises for getting started on a journal
If you are a seasoned journal writer, you may not need these-- just write. But if you are just starting, you might use the first exercise, which we used in the workshop. And if you get stuck, use some of these other tactics. Please keep in mind that while this is a difficult time for many people, most of us are not being personally persecuted as Anne Frank and her family were. We are not comparing ourselves to her but are using her courage and ability to help us write.
1) 10 steps in Anne Frank's beginning diary (June 20, 1942)
- What are your thoughts about writing a diary today or generally
- Why are you writing this diary entry? (Anne is using it as a sort of friend)
- Can you say more about why you are writing this diary?
- Do you want to name your diary? If so, what? If not, say why not.
- Brief story of your life: who is your father, mother and name your siblings and tell where you have lived and live now.
- How is your family being effected by "Shelter in Plavce?
- What are the rules we have for sheltering in place in our country/state right now?
- Tell what your grandparents are doing, if they are alive right now.
- What do you remember of your last day of school before we left for the shelter in place?
- How do you feel your family is doing?
2) Other journal- writing exercises
***Five W's - on the day you are writing tell
WHO you are with, who you are today, who is not there?
WHAT you are doing, what others are doing, what is going on in the world (What did you do earlier in the day or week?)?
WHEN do you think things will change, when will you be doing something else later in the day?
WHERE are you now? Where have you been today? Inside/outside? Where does your mind go?
WHY do you think you feel the way you do? Why are people acting the way they are?
WHEN do you think things will change, when will you be doing something else later in the day?
WHERE are you now? Where have you been today? Inside/outside? Where does your mind go?
WHY do you think you feel the way you do? Why are people acting the way they are?
***Burke's Pentad (sort of, hoping G Nakagawa doesn't see this)
Imagine today is a play or movie you are writing about COVID19:
Scene- Where is the action taking place?
Action- What is happening?
Actors- Who is doing the acting? What are they like?
Action- What is happening?
Actors- Who is doing the acting? What are they like?
Agent- How did the actors do what they were doing? What did they use? Any tools.weapons (even words), tricks?
Purpose - Why are the actors doing what they are doing?
***Description
Take a scene from your life these days and try to describe it as fully as you can, without giving any opinions. Try to use as many details from your five sense as you can: sight, touch, smell, taste, and hearing.
Take a scene from your life these days and try to describe it as fully as you can, without giving any opinions. Try to use as many details from your five sense as you can: sight, touch, smell, taste, and hearing.
***Feelings only
Try to describe your feelings from the past 24 hours without telling what happened, just what you felt.
Try to describe your feelings from the past 24 hours without telling what happened, just what you felt.
***Interview
In person or by phone or messaging of Facetime, interview someone. Ask them questions about this age of COVID-19 to see if you can get down more history from someone else's point of view.
EXTRA MATERIALS FOR READERS, WRITERS, PARENTS & TEACHERS
WEBSITES YOU MIGHT ENJOY
History’s Greatest Diaries
(there are seven here)
David
Sedaris: “Keeping a Diary in the Age of Over-Sharing” (video,
2:19 minutes: Thanks to Geoff Polk for this!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6a7p6SyPSM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6a7p6SyPSM
Dear Diary: Fifteen Noteworthy
Journal-Keepers
The Diary of Frida Kahlo
(downloadable pdf, with drawings)
Free Online Diary: for if you want to keep a private internet diary
Blogger: one of the many free
sites for creating a blog, if you are ready to go public
READINGS (* for kids and Adults, otherwise, for adults)
Some
Famous Diaries (See above websites for more)
*Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl
Diary of Anne Frank: Critical Edition
The Diaries of Virginia Woolf (5 volume)
The Diary of Anais Nin (4 volumes)
The Diary of Frida Kahlo - see download, above
The Diary of Samuel Pepys (1659-1668)
Plague extracts:
http://www.pepys.info/1665/plague.html
*Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Wartime Sarajevo
Anthologies of Diaries
A Book of One's Own: People and their Diaries by Thomas Mallon
The Book of American Diaries: From Heart and Mind to Pen and Paper--Day by Day Personal
Accounts Through the Centuries by Randall M. Miller & Linda Patterson Miller
The Hidden Writer: Diaries and the Creative Life: Alexander Johnson
Fictional
Diaries
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
*Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
The Plague by Albert Camus
*****
Diane Kendig - Published Diaries & Journals
Ariadne's Thread: A Collection of Contemporary Women's Journals, ed. Lyn Lifshin (Harper&Row, 1982), pp 92-96
In these passages, you can read about the night a man climbed in my bedroom window, and not with romance in mind, the night I blew an oven up on myself, the night my heart was broken-- ah, life in Cleveland Heights in the 1970s! The book is out of print, but you can get used copies or find it in libraries, like the Cleveland Public Library.
"Me and Thoreau and the Cuyahoga Valley National Park:
My Life in the Woods with the Kids"
This is a collection of journals I kept when I was a visiting artist in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Each day, I read about what Thoreau was doing that day and thought about it in the context of my work in the woods. I am grateful to the journal About Place for publishing these.
Diane Kendig: HOME AGAIN
While not my personal journal, this is an occasional blog that I began when I moved home to Canton, Ohio from the Boston area in
2011 to buy my father's house, which he built with his own hands when he came home from WWII. I was able to bring him home from assisted living about two days a week until he died in 2019. In my blog, I write about coming home, about Dad, about my writing and the world of poetry, about life with Paul, who made it all possible, and Robbie, who kept it all...dogged.
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| Sippo Lake |
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Many many thanks for the people who helped with this: to Stark Arts, which sponsored me, to Paul for everything as always, to my 25 friends who responded about their diary-keeping on FB, and to the diarists who inspired me, going all the way back to Samuel Pepys, especially Anne Frank, and Zlata and Virginia Woolf.
***
In memory of my mom, Gladys Kendig, who got me my first diary and my first library card.
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