Parisian Phoenix Publishing

This month, Lehigh Valley author Laurel Olsen Wenson presented the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group with a program on various types of journaling and then turned that information into a workshop of using journaling, both in the text and behind the scenes, as a resource for character development.

Types of Journals

Apparently, at least according to Laurel, much of the various electronic media we consume and create counts as journals. I had never really thought about that, but as a journalist and historian, I recognize it all as primary source material. Heck, I use my personal blog and the electronic, internet search tagging system to keep notes for my planned medical advocacy memoir.

I have less to remember and less to eventually write if I prepare my thoughts for public consumption along the way.

TYPES OF JOURNALS:

• Gratitude
• Affirmation
• Reflection/Memoir
• Medical
• Art
• Free Writing
• Tarot/Divination
• Bullet Journals/ Planners
• Travel
• Nature
• Food
• Online (Blog, Instagram, Facebook Posts)

Angel’s Experience

I do/ have done most of these blogging types. I’m not bragging. It was never intentional. Everything in my life has been equal parts purpose and chaos. But let me add some highlights from my personal experience:

• Tarot Journal: I started a journal of all the Tarot readings I did and all my contemplations and interactions with the cards about 20 years ago. I think I gave this journal to my daughter, as I also “handed down” my actual deck to her. I don’t read that much any more and she’s better at it than I ever was. This journal inspired Eva Parry to search for a formal tarot journal so she could chronicle her own learning within divination, but she could not find what she wanted. So, we made it. The result was the book Shuffling & Scribbling: A Journal for Learning Divination Through Tarot.
• Bullet Journals/Planners: I have a love/hate relationship with Silk & Sonder Wellness Planners. I wish they weren’t so expensive and that they would give you more than a month at a time. I have a very hard time keeping track of things in a 30-day block. But this is a very unique product with a lot of knock-offs coming to pass, and I have a PILE of planners on my desk that I hope to review in an upcoming video. Because that’s what I do for fun. If you want more of my experience with the product, this is a good summary of my experience in 2021. A year later, I revisited the system here and one very loyal customer listed all the reasons she felt I was wrong in the comments.
• Travel: I have had many interesting travels, and I always blog during them. I also keep a physical journal while we’re out and about. Some trips this is a separate book, but more often it’s my day-to-day journal. My frequent traveling partner M would always sit beside me while I typed on my laptop and say, “I can’t wait to see what I did today.”
  • Some more exotic entries:
  • To Siberia for Pizza, Arrival in Siberia
  • The Story Behind My Travels
  • A Walk Through Ali Sabieh (Djibouti, East Africa)
  • Road Trip Djibouti Style
  • Departure from Mogadishu (This one involves an old plane with Russian pilots smoking in the cockpit)
  • My Daughter, Magnificent Traveler (we took her to France & Russia)
  • Calm Beauty in Kazan (this is where I let my daughter smoke a hookah)
  • Initial Impressions of Tunisia
  • Arriving in Sana’a, Yemen
  • Entries from domestic trips:
  • Canandaquia Steamboat Landing
  • Honey Nut Cheerios in the Air (Buffalo, N.Y.)
  • And local voyages:
  • And We’re Walking (Lehigh Valley)

• Food: When The Teenager was younger, my best friends lived in Virginia and North Carolina. They often asked me for recipes and financial advice regarding grocery shopping. I found it easiest to start a blog. In this blog, I recorded every meal and every shopping trip for seven years. Visit that here. I gave it up eight years ago, but I do sometimes reference it to retrieve my own recipes.

Laurel Olsen Welson is a retired middle school English teacher, so she knows a lot about patience, diplomacy and efficiency. She has written at least three series of books that I know (The Harbor Cove Series, The Caldwell Series and her Sets on a Shoestring book), and her Amazon author page is here.

I already read and reviewed the first Harbor Cove book and will be starting the Caldwell Series next month.

She will be teaching Northampton Community College’s online publishing courses starting next semester.