PROSE PROJECT/JOURNAL
For our work in prose, we can bridge the gap between dramatic language and learning to tell our stories through journaling work. In this exercise, you will write a journal entry from your own perspective as a monologue, spoken or intended to be spoken to a real person in your life.
Choose one of ten story prompts:
Tell a story of a time you lost something.
Tell a story of a time a friend was there for you.
Tell a story of an achievement you never expected to attain.
Tell the story of a time you got injured.
Tell a story of a time you felt taken advantage of.
Tell a story of a time you lied to someone close to you.
Tell a story of a time your expectations were exceeded.
Tell a story of a time you had a spiritual experience.
Tell a story of an adventure away from home or traveling.
Tell a story about your favorite childhood memory.
Once you have chosen your prompt, ask yourself, “Who am I speaking to? Who am I telling this story to?” It could be a friend, a colleague, a family member, a therapist, or a mentor, but make sure to direct the story to someone real in your life. It does not have to be a person who is directly implicated in the story itself. It may not have anything to do with them at all, but you're telling your story to whomever it is that you choose to tell it to. So, choose wisely who you want to deliver this language to and write your journal in the first person, using “I” statements, and speaking as directly to your counterpart as possible, making sure to include and connect with them as you tell your story.
If it's easier for you to speak your story out loud, record it, and then transcribe it from audio, feel free. It's a great way to work with verbatim language for this project. Once the story has been told and written down, it is important that we take the story and read it aloud with our full, supported voice, allowing ourselves to hear the story and our words, fresh and new, resonate in the space around us as we allow the energy into our bodies. After reading through the journal entry once, find your feet, stand tall, and read the story again with a supported and open voice, paying the most attention to keeping the length of the spine long, the ribcage open, the toes relaxed, and the alta major available.
As you read through the story of your journal entry, focus on landing the energy of your language
on the person to whom you're speaking. Visualize them in the room, receiving your language. How are they responding? As you find your flow through the story, continue to check in with how you're being received. After this, it's important to take a step back and allow what you've learned from this practice to integrate.
After some time passes, perhaps a day or two, return to your journal entry and allow yourself to once again speak it aloud. Allow yourself to continue to land the language on the listener and pay close attention to how your body reacts, where you may be experiencing tension and tightness.
Observe the breath and, upon completion, observe your emotional state. Then prepare to release some of the energy that may have been stored in the body telling this story. Stretch the body, release the body, and find your way back to your story, this time focusing on allowing the voice to be as authentic and natural as possible, allowing yourself to inhabit the rhythms that the language requires of you. Having felt its impact now multiple times, begin to experience the sound that the language makes.
Focus on where you can elongate vowels or where you can more sharply articulate your consonants, allowing there to be energy in the speaking of your truth. This is one of the major ways that we reconnect the pathways and our ability to communicate ourselves and not let our stories own us. Instead, we own and tell our stories. Being able to confidently access the truth of our past while managing our emotions and communicating through our bodies allows us to practice the ease of being present in ourselves, even while we dig deeply and personally into our core understandings of ourselves.
It is not necessary to share this monologue with others to receive its benefits. However, it does help to solidify the impact of the project. If you can attain a certain amount of comfort speaking your story, maintaining your authentic voice, your humor, your lightness, your buoyancy, and your groundedness, and employing all the things you've learned up until now, invite someone to listen, and it doesn't have to be the person for whom you are speaking.
Your first audience can be someone you feel safe with, someone you're willing to fail in front of with glee and joy, recognizing that you're opening yourself up through speech, emotion, language, and articulation and that it is the ultimate practice for how to translate that energy exchange between you and other human beings at the highest levels.
