Write to the Centre is a 'low-fi guide to journaling in a high-tech world,' written by my friend Helen Lehndorf and published by HauNui Press late last year.
Its pages are filled with colourful images from Helen's own journals, hand-written poetry and lists, drawings, and collage pieces, as well as thoughtful prose about the role that journals can play in a rich creative life.
This book is so authentic and encouraging. I've been lucky enough to receive hand-written letters from Helen in the past, and in a way it feels like an extension of those - warm, funny, thoughtful.
I haven’t kept a proper journal in years (notebooks with lists and drawings, definitely, but not expressive journals where I write) but I did all through my childhood and teenage years, and have now started doing so again.
Helen writes about what keeping a journal can do for a creative and mindful everyday life, but also offers tips and exercises to help you get started. I found these very helpful when faced with the clean blank page of a new journal!
Keira is also very keen on drawing and writing in notebooks, so this book will be a good resource for her too. It would make a fabulous gift wrapped up with a blank notebook, inky pen and glue-stick, don't you think?
Helen agreed to answer some questions for me about being 'brave' and vulnerable, the true solace of pen and paper, and how a journal can be like a blanket fort.
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Welcome, Helen! I found Write to the Centre really inspiring, and reading it somehow tapped into a childhood feeling I'd forgotten - the idea of journal as a place to experiment and work through problems. How long have you been keeping journals?
In the form I use now, since university, so 24 years or so. (I did keep a teenage diary, but threw those out when I left home at 18. Thank goodness. I still have my awful teenage poems though - they are great for a laugh.)
Towards the end of the book, you write that your journals are a bit like a blanket fort - a space for both sanctuary and adventure. Can you explain a bit more about this idea of a journal as a safe place?
So much of adult life is busy, active, juggling a lot of responsibilities...the cognitive load can be very intense. I find my journal practice creates an ease and spaciousness outside of all that.
In my journal, I can 'show up' in whatever state I find myself in, from joyful to cranky and everything in between, and both feed and surrender to my inner experience.
I can also experiment in there, without judgement or pressure - the stakes are low because it is me talking to me. Its also a place I remind myself of what I love and what is important...a kind of touchstone.
The chapter 'build up the quality of your attention' looks at practising observation and learning to 'notice' more. As our lives can easily become consumed with work and other commitments, what can the act of keeping a journal offer us?
I think working on heightening our attention and observation through a journal practice brings many benefits: a sense of gratitude, an increase of a fun element in our creativity, inspiration, a feeling of being truly engaged with our lives and at times, a true solace.
You once wrote that this book wasn’t an easy one to write, in part due to the vulnerability of sharing your personal pages and process, but also because as New Zealanders we tend not to be 'out there' with our emotions. Now that the book has been out in the world for 6 months, do you still feel this way?
Yes I do. People have used words like 'brave' when they talk to me about the book, which makes me a little nervous...in the New Zealand lexicon, sometimes 'brave' means 'woah! you really did that?'. On a bad day, I can interpret 'brave' as 'foolish'.
The American comedian Amy Schumer had a naked portrait photograph taken of herself last year and she said that she thought she looked pretty great but since it came out, people have described it as 'brave'. Yikes. I can relate, though!
It possibly was foolish in that it still feels a little uncomfortable - I can't read it without cringing, whereas I can happily read my poetry book. It is a guileless book, in the sense that it isn't trying to be clever, there's no irony, a lot of the journal art is kind of haphazard and artless...but it is sincere!
I just wanted to share my own particular mess in the hope it might encourage other people to make their own lovely mess. It is a quirky creation, but despite my conflicted feelings, I am proud of it.
Life is confusing, mysterious and often overwhelming - I think a journal can be a place which exists alongside the stream of life, like climbing out of a swift river and sitting on a grassy bank in the sun for a while. I hope my book points the way towards that.
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You can find Helen's blog here and your own copy of Write the Centre here.
A book giveaway is in the works too, so look out for that soon...
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A page from Write to the Centre, with a snippet of Helen's journal page
