6. Create a positive feedback loop. As you continue to use journal as an opportunity to be with and learn about yourself, you will find that practice gains a momentum all its own. Discovering your own hidden depths piques your curiosity and stimulates you to continue, setting up a positive feedback loop between your conscious and unconscious mind.

7. Emphasize process rather than product. An important purpose of journal writing is simply expressing and recording your thoughts and feelings. Concentrate on process of writing -- keeping flow of words rather than worrying about result. If your goal is to have specific audiences read your piece, go back to it later and edit it. Use your journal as raw material for more polished writing.

8. Learn from your own experiences. It is always good to reread your entries a month or so down road. It demonstrates your growth -- a nice pat on back for all of us. Look for patterns and correlations. What improved, what stayed same? Learning from yourself is so much more gentler on self-esteem. Use objectivity to review your life from a different perspective with hindsight.

Relax, have fun, and don't forget to laugh! Journal writing is its own reward. Once you get started, your journal will become another one of your good friends -- one who is always available and never presents a deafening ear. Your journal loves you for being you.

Another way to find emotion is to relate article, topic, to music. Does it remind you of a fox trot, waltz, rock and roll, jazz, R&B, what? It could even remind you of a particular song. Can you access song, or remember lyrics? Musically lyrics are great places to find emotional words and language.

Step 2: Connecting

Close your eyes, sit quietly with article. Sense yourself reading article in your mind. No, not identical words but idea, vision, thoughts. If that’s a challenge, read article out loud, very softly, as if reading it to an angel. Even notice where you take breaths. These are places where new paragraphs begin, commas or periods needs to occur. If you run out of breath, maybe sentence needs dividing, eliminated, or even combined.

You can even tape record your reading. Listen with your eyes closed. This is also a great way to hear flat places in article. Identify emotion from what you hear. Record all emotional words you hear or feel in margins. Every word is right, so don't miss any. Place all judgment in a shoe box for now.

Step 3: Adding In The Emotion

Review your words. Brainstorm with a thesaurus, synonym finder, or dictionary. Online you can use: http://thesaurus.reference.com/, or http://www.acronymfinder.com/, http://m-w.com/netdict.htm. Continue your list in margins. Now its time, before editing process to add in emotion. If first draft is very dry, this is a good time to realize that it’s not uncommon for writers to rewrite article completely because emotion conveyed was too far off at beginning. If this is case, consider first draft a brain dump, a warm up session. And now you're ready to roll. Your hot, feelings are sizzling.

Step 4: Editing

Usually, editing is to help clarity and tighten. Caution though, it is easy to remove emotionally charged elements that you painstakingly added. Sometimes, when using an outside editor, someone that doesn't hold same emotions as yourself, they remove emotions. And sometimes too, there are too many emotions. There is a delicate balance. However, many editors walk this tightrope carefully and with honor.

Most writing needs energy, needs emotion, that convey story, information, so as not to put reader to sleep. Or even worse, stop them from reading. And your passion is what needs transitioning from you to them. Watch magic when you read someone else’s material that conveys emotions. See how they use words. When I'm in flow, I feel emotion pushing pen as fast it can across paper. I know, through experience, when this is occurring and I'm writing so fast, I have a tendency to leave words out. I use to stop at end of every paragraph and reread and add them. Don't, let flow occur. Trust that whatever is needed will again be there for you to filling in any missing blanks. Let magic come through. Your readers desire it.

Special Note: An accompanying list of emotionally-charged words is available in Abundance Center’s Forms Section.

(c) Copyright 2004, Catherine Franz