Welcome to your first of THREE days of journaling prompts for WRITING THE CIRCLE. My goal is to help you get started reading and writing your way through Laura Day’s The Circle. 

If you don’t have your copy yet, you can get started with these prompts anyway. I don’t want to say that you don’t need the book (ahem…I love the book), but I am prepared to walk you all the way through it, always with a slant toward writing the circle. But, to get back to Laura Day:

“You will learn to take everything in your life—yes, even your losses,
your wounds, your hunger, your anger, and your grief—and use it
as creative energy to shape the world you want.” –Laura Day

To do these exercises, I recommend that you have 1) a timer (there’s a handy one on your phone, or you can use the timer on your stove in the kitchen, or you can go to https://e.ggtimer.com/); 2) a new notebook in which to write. If you have an established journal and want to use it, that’s fine, too. (There are no prizes here for following Bethany’s directions to perfection.) 

Your First Writing Prompt:

In the Preface to the 2009 edition of The Circle, Laura Day describes her book’s original debut—on September 10, 2001, in New York at her local bookstore. She scarcely mentions the canceled book tour, focusing instead on the circle of support that came together for the book, and for both her and her young son–and even their cat (as their neighborhood was evacuated). Terrible things do happen, Day reminds us. Tragedies on every scale. But with this preface, she invites us to see our tragedies differently. Yes, it was awful. But were there any gifts that came along for the ride? Have you noticed those?

Set your timer for 5 minutes (so easy!) and write in your Circle journal about a time when something went horribly wrong.

THEN, reset the timer (I recommend 10 minutes, but if that’s an obstacle, go for 5) and write about how you survived. Who or what helped you? Where did you find comfort? At what moment did you see that you would get through this event? What gave you strength to keep going?

A note: If you feel that you didn’t survive, that you’re still struggling, then write that. Give yourself permission to pour it all out on the page. Trust that you will begin to see it (whatever it is) more clearly, when it’s in writing. It turns out that seeing is what this is all about. Seeing Differently is a topic I sometimes blog about, too, and you can go here for a sample.

(To re-visit my introduction to this series, visit this post.)