A Year in the Life: Journaling for Self-Discovery

by Sheila Bender

Using a masterful blend of guidance, idea prompts and self-evaluation advice, Bender nurtures readers through one year of soul searching through journal writing.

Genres: Journaling, Writing, Nonfiction, Self Help

224 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2000

About the author

Sheila Bender is the founder of Writingitreal.com. She teaches online and in-person offering classes and writing consults by Zoom as well.

Her passion is to facilitate those who write from personal experience. Visit her at WritingItReal.com and look for her classes as well at Il Chiostro, Women on Writing, and the International Association for Journal Writing.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 1 out of 5]

Meh. Disappointing book about the benefits of journaling, complete with a year of rather contrived journaling prompts. As I first read, then skimmed, I kept muttering to the author, "Do your own work. Do your own work." I'm not sure there was a single page on which the author didn't quote from or refer to another writer and it quickly became very, very annoying.

[Caylee Grey · Rating 4 out of 5]

So the prompts are awful. I couldn’t pull use out of even one of them. But I loved the beginning chapters so much that I’ll still give this 4 stars.

[athenaowl · Rating 3 out of 5]

A person who journals tends to be fascinated with his own life. A person who journals tends to be fascinated with the lives of others

Writing is wiser than we are, many writers say. As a poet and essayist this has been my experience. I let the writing lead me, and the whole time it is leading me, I must be careful to remain unknowing. I must not set my will upon the words. I must let them flow as they wish to. My job is to keep them coming through my center, not my head, and only in this way will the writing steer wisdom's course.
 

Writing is clarifying. It is not an in penetrable mystery to be avoided. It's mysteries are those of enlightenment. Exploring the mystery of ourselves is a life-saving act of bravery. It is saying that yes I will make discoveries and I will take journeys offered. I will know myself.

 Soul making is allowing the eternal essence to enter and experience but outer world through all the orifices of the body--, seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting, touching-- so that the soul grows during its time on Earth.... Soul making is constantly confronting the paradox on an eternal being is dwelling in a temporal body.

[Emma Sea · Rating 1 out of 5]

Jesus, I'm an idiot!

My friend Chris already reviewed this book, and I already liked her review. And I forgot!

Because I saw this rec'd in another book I ordered a goddamn paper copy from overseas and paid the exorbitant rates to have to sent to NZ. And it's awful! There's a reason Chris gave it one star.

Oh my god, this book annoys me. It's difficult to convey the extent to which these prompts do not reflect my life experience.

I'm just... gonna go. I will not waste words on reviewing it thoroughly when there are so many good books out there to spend my time on. But I do not rec this book.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've got to be honest; I didn't truly finish it. This book was interesting it had a lot of different ideas on how to creatively journal. I looked ahead at some of the chapters and skimmed through them a bit; they just seemed not my cup of tea. It was a very interesting book however. Opened my mind quite a bit. If you're looking for other great resources for journaling, this book lists a lot of them which is a plus!

[Fun2bwif]

great book about journaling i was able to discover great parts of my self anf issues I needed to work. a very good book i have relieved anxiety and worry and also most impoirtantly i get to realease things inside me without bogging me up and having to trust annyone

[Karla]

This book might help someone who is new to journaling, but the first activities weren't helpful to me, I thought they were pretty silly.

[Lacey Louwagie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just finished working through a year of weekly journaling prompts from this book. When I bought it at a used booksale, I remember thinking that the prompts didn't seem all that provocative, and after doing every single one, it turns out that I was mostly right. The prompts did get me to write and think about some things that I probably wouldn't have otherwise, and my favorite ones were those that got me to delve into my memories. I liked less the ones that asked for strange or obscure metaphors, like, "Imagine a body part is made of a non-living substance and write about it" or "describe a self-portrait of a feeling." I also didn't get a real feeling of "completion" when I finished, since the exercises did not build upon one another in any way; they could have been arranged in any order and the experience would have been exactly the same.

Each week has a main prompt, and then six "extensions" in case you want to write every day rather than just once a week. I could never motivate myself to do the extensions, even though a lot of them were pretty interesting. Others were pretty much just lazy rephrasings of the initial prompt, or takes on it that were only slightly different. Also, it annoyed me that often the title of the prompts had very little to do with the actual prompt -- I noticed this especially when I started posting some of my exercises to my writing blog.

Still, the additional journaling resources at the end, the suggestions for writing on holidays and other special occasions, and the "mini-anthology" of writing based on the prompts at the end were all nice touches. And I think I will be able to pull some valuable exercises for use in my spiritual writing group or other writing classes. To see some of my writing from the book, click here.

[Ruth · Rating 2 out of 5]

memoir - a NF work on how to keep a journal for a year - read most of it but wasn't what I was looking for

[Nina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I took one of her writing workshops. I loved it, she is a nice person and I learned a lot. It was fun!

[Ummu Fatihah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Picked this out from local public library shelves. SO far so good. It provides good motivation on writing everyday. Can be used for blogging as well...

[Hella]

Boek met opdrachten voor een heel jaar om meer uit je dagboek te halen, om steeds dieper te gaan.