The Book of Alchemy: A guide to the art of journalling

THIS IS YOUR PROMPT: Indulge in your own “What else?” Start with a grievance, a frustration, or a fear. Ask yourself “What else?” after each sentence for as long as it takes to feel a little catharsis.

THIS IS YOUR PROMPT: Write about an important first—where someone taught you how to use or do something. It could be anything: a cooking lesson, fixing a flat tire, learning to drive, helping a cow give birth, taking the swim test, riding a bike over a rooted mountainside, cutting in paint on a wall, or kayaking on the river. When you finish, consi

THIS IS YOUR PROMPT: Meditate on places. If you’re working on fiction, perhaps choose places from that fictional world. The easiest might be your childhood home, but it could be a restaurant, a street, a parking lot, a ferry station, a borrowed home in the Catskills where it rained for three days, or a stranger’s glass penthouse where you once did

In the case of my memoir, Stray, I would take an index card, and on the front, I’d write a place—“Laurel Canyon,” for example. Then, on the back, I’d write any details that came to mind: landslides, traffic, Lily’s coffee cart, squirrels stealing pomelos, care and threat, Fleetwood Mac, loneliness, losing the daylight. Another was “Owens Lake”—dust

THIS IS YOUR PROMPT: Pick five items from the list below. popcorn * lettuce * iceberg * cotton candy * puffs * sugar cubes * dandelions * buttercups * pallbearer * clothesline * National Geographic * fire ants * watermelon * sunflowers * ticket stub * campfire * satellite * fish scales * baby powder * quilt * brooch * barrette * tin can * bingo * F

When memories make themselves manifest, they alight like butterflies—fleeting, momentary, ineffable, seemingly uncapturable. The task of the writer then, having had the epiphany embedded within memory, is to relate not only the message from the dream embedded within the memory, but to also articulate, in language, that nebulous nature of the memory

THIS IS YOUR PROMPT: What role did superstition play in your childhood? Was it indulged by the adults around you or scoffed at? Do any of those early beliefs still hold sway? Write about them, and why.

THIS IS YOUR PROMPT: Write about a teacher, cataloging what you remember (good, bad, and otherwise) and how you saw them as a child. Then write about them as the student of life you are today.

THIS IS YOUR PROMPT: What food evokes a transporting moment of time and place? Taste the moment and write down everything you can remember.