Using Visual Prompts with Journaling

Do you journal? Do you like to use visual prompts with your journaling? Visual prompts in some ways are more powerful than a sentence or quote prompt. A visual prompt can mean so many things to different people - you will have a different reaction to a visual prompt than another person will. Even more interesting, on another day and in another mood, you will probably have a different reaction to that same visual prompt. So visual prompts are pretty adaptable and they are very interesting to work with.

Visual prompts are easy to find. You can cut out pictures from magazines, or the newspaper. You can use photographs, it can be especially interesting to use old photographs of people that you don't know. You can use tarot or inspiration cards. You can buy a bunch of postcards from a museum. You can buy art books from the discount table at the bookstore, and cut it up for images. A great way to get images is to take pictures with your digital camera and to actively take images of varied things, whatever grabs your attention. Whatever you see is grabbing your attention for a reason. There are images everywhere.

Some great places to get visual images include museum gift shops, the discount table at the book store, library book sales (where they sell old books), magazines and newspapers, comics, photographs, your friends (magazines or books they don't want, or even old photographs).

It can be helpful to glue the images to index cards. This will make all of the images the same size and it will mean the images will have less of a chance of ripping. It is probably easiest to glue the images using a glue stick, which can be found at any large office supply store. You can also use oversize index cards, depending on the size of your images. These index cards are also found at any large office supply store.

It can be very helpful to put all of your visual prompts in a shoebox, or another box of some type. Then to put your hand into the box and just grab one to start journaling with. This way you are selecting one from random. A prompt may not inspire you in a direct way. For example if a prompt is a photograph, you might think it would inspire you to write about the people in the photograph. But instead it might inspire you to write about something about your hopes and dreams for a family in the future, or maybe your thoughts about society. Just focus on what you are inspired to write, not on the actual prompt itself. If a prompt does not inspire you, then move on to the next prompt. Your journaling is more important than the prompt, the prompt just exists to inspire your writing.

Visual prompts can be very interesting and a lot of fun. If you are looking for something new or different to try with your journaling routine, I would encourage you to consider adding visual prompts.