Escribir a mano...

En una época en la que la tecnología parece ser de más ventaja en el proceso de aprendizaje, debemos de tomar en cuenta que el escribir no solo nos ayuda a aprender de una manera mayor, pero aún más el escribir a mano nos ayuda a ejercitar nuestro cerebro y la capacidad de expandir nuestras capacidades creativas.

Escribir a mano nos ayuda a ejercitar nuestras capacidades vinculadas con el habla, la escritura, y la resolución de problemas. Esto también nos ayuda a reconocer e interpretar lo que escribimos y leemos, así como también a procesar aquello que escuchamos.

El escribir a mono no solo puede ayudarnos a incrementar nuestros potenciales, sino también nos describe y nos ayuda a individualizarnos. Cada uno de nosotros nos podemos identificar con nuestra escritura y ella revela mucho de quienes somos. Nuestra individualidad de escritura esta vinculada a nuestra creatividad y la manera de expresarla, y con ello mostrar a los demás como nos sentimos y que personalidad tenemos.

Por lo tanto, si quieres desarrollar tu creatividad y manera de expresarte un buen lugar para empezar es escribir a mano, no solo tu diario, sino también lo que fluya de tu mente. Un muy ejercicio y una muy buena manera se reconocernos….

Magsulat ka na!

Ang madalas na pagsusulat ang pinakamabuting paraan para mahasa ang iyong galing sa pagsusulat. Ito ang ilan sa mga benepisyong makukuha sa madalas na pagsusulat:

• Magiging isa kang magaling na manunulat
• Nakatutulong ito para makaiwas sa mga distraksyon sa pagsusulat
• Nakakatulong ito upang ikaw ay humusay sa pag-aaral
• Napananatili nitong matalim ang iyong utak

Kung gusto mo talagang humusay sa pagsusulat, magsimula ka lang. Huwag kang matakot magkamali. Marami ka pang oras para masuri at maitama ang iyong nasulat. Ituloy mo lang ang pagpapahayag ng mga naiisip mo.

Writing your thoughts improves your creative writing!

Keeping a journal is a great practice to explore your ideas and develop your imagination and writing skills.

I am sure you have written a paper, and I am just as sure you have been interrupted by someone in the middle of it. Subsequently, the idea you were writing is gone. There is no way you can retrieve it, because the spark you have gotten disappeared with the interruption. The same thing happens whenever you are writing a paper and trying to edit it. Any effort to correct and revise something becomes more difficult and time consuming.

What I have found helpful is to write just as my brain is thinking. Of course, that will many times lead me to grammatical errors or even incoherent sentences. Without a doubt just jotting ideas will capture the first thought. Once the first idea is captured, if a different version appears, I usually write it down between brackets and then, when the time to edit comes, I chose which sentence is more faithful and fitting to what I want to say. In this way, the creative process of writing is kept, but with the opportunity to work on it and refined it or to totally transform it. Once the main structure is written, the process of embellishing and adjusting can be done without losing sight of the bigger picture of the oeuvre you are trying to accomplish.

Consequently, my invitation is: write as much as you can. Once you have written your thoughts, you can take the time you need to correct and revisit the ideas you have worked on.

Writing: puts closer to God.

Writing a journal is a good idea if you want to practice self-examination and self-criticism, but it could be a great tool if you want to keep track of your journey with God. This record keeping won’t be only the criticism of yourself, but rather it has the aim of discover the action of God in your daily life. That means that instead of tracking only the bad experiences or the sad moments, you also have to see the joyous moments. Also, you can discover that, in the middle of sadness or anxiety, how God is present.

This type of writing requires that you be sincere in what you write. It means that you will have written down plainly and straight forwardly what is in your heart: all your desires, frustrations, prayers, dreams. Once you have sincerely written, in a way spoken to God through writing, be attentive. Listen and then record what is God’s invitation. That means be open to hearing the actions of God though your prayer, and in the presence of others.

This practice of trying to discover God’s action in your life, will keep you in touch with yourself, and will help you to understand and make sense of your life more easily.

Writing makes you a better speaker…

If you have been put in front of a multitude, I am sure you have realized how frightening it can sometimes be. You cannot utter words, even if you know in your head what you want to say, or maybe your mind goes blank and in an instant you forgot what you wanted to say. Subsequently, there is no coincidence that the best speakers are those that have been given some time and some thought to their preparation.

I remember one of my experiences while taking homiletics (speaking in the church from the pulpit), my teacher told me once ‘your deliverance of your sermon sucks.’ I was terrified, since I am supposed to be speaking as part of my life and my job. Well, I guess I was challenged and I think it was kind of a great way to make me give the best I could. So, one day I told my teacher, can I just deliver my talk without reading it? Can I just have some flash cards with the points I want to make? And he agreed…

The best thing I learned from that experience was that I could write and organize my speech, but I would get all tense if I had to read it. On the contrary if I could just deliver it, I was more at ease. But to be able to be at ease I had to write down my talk and then from it, highlight the points I wanted to make. Writing helped me to organize and clarify the content. Once I had a clear idea of the points I wanted to make, then I was able just to build upon the outline since I had previously written my speacje without the need to read.

How good of a speaker I am, I have no idea, because only people who have heard me can judge that. Without a doubt, thought, writing down my speeches has made my delivery of them easier to give, and easier for listeners to understand.  

Writing is great tool to learn a language…

Have you ever wonder how the great writers become so great? Well, ‘practice is everything.’ If you had ever to learn a second language, you may have experienced the need to understand the structure of writing, and many times you will realize how poor the knowledge of your own language is.

To compose a sentence can look really easy, and many times we get upset at the lack of structure of someone’s speech or writing, but we have to realize that getting it right is not easy at all. It requires a lot of attention and a lot of practice to use properly a new language. One of my teachers once said: ‘you cannot claim to own a word if you cannot give its definition in at least three ways.’ It sounds crazy, but it has some truth, in order for you to own and use a language properly, it is necessary to acquire vocabulary, and to use it accurately. The adequate use of the vocabulary then, will give you the opportunity to convey not only ideas, but most essentially the meaning that you want to transmit.

Meaning is what then has to be capture in a sentence… and capturing the right idea is an art when we have to use a language that is not our own. It takes time to acquire vocabulary, to be delighted and elated by it, and to entice others with the same meaning that can be faithful to your idea, but as clear and appealing to them.

Therefore, if you ever wonder how can you become a great writer in a different language that your own, start writing! Look for corrections, and read as much as you can so that you may acquire the necessary vocabulary to write outstanding papers, essays, blogs, etc.

Writing can lead your spiritual life…

Mary is a devoted catholic who goes to church every weekend and some times during the week. She is really aware of her faith and what it entails, but many times her question has been: “how is it possible that I try to do my best to keep my prayer life and many times I fail?’ As she was talking and trying to make sense of it, I asked her: ‘how do you pray?’ Her answer was: ‘I say the rosary, I pray my novena, I go to mass and confession and I say my prayers.’ After a moment of silence, I asked again: ‘what do you pray?’ and she told me: ‘I just told you.’ Feeling her frustration, I continued, well, what about if you try to pray in a different way, would you be open to do so? ‘I could try,’ her answer was. I continued, you could try to write down three things every night before you go to sleep. a) write everything for what you are grateful and happy that happen during the day, and give thanks to God. b) write down what was not that good or lead you to be unhappy during the day, and ask for forgiveness to God. Finally, c) write down what you would like to work on the next day, and ask strength from God to accomplish it… and then we said our good byes…

This is not my personal practice, but a practice that I learned many years ago while I was still studying in the seminary… but without a doubt, it has been a practice that has helped me to understand what needed to be paid attention to, and what needs to be given time in order to understand it. Writing became a tool not only to express my happiness and frustrations, but also a tool that could lead me in what I could do to make my life better… and even better, how to relate to God with my own words… 

Writing Heals!

Many times talking about issues can be difficult and painful. There are experiences which we cannot describe when we try to talk about them, either because they elicit shame, fear, or sadness. Here is where writing could become you ally and help you to go through those difficult experiences in order for you to start the healing process that the expression of them can bring.

Don’t worry about what or how to write… at the beginning everything is in disarray and mixed up, as your feelings or your emotional life could be, but with time your writing will help you to clarify and to give order to your thoughts and feelings. Writing can be difficult but with time it just gets better and then you can exclaim: “My heart is stirred by a noble theme, as I sing my ode to the king. My tongue is the pen of a nimble scribe.” Nevertheless, you have to remember that writing has a purpose and it is to help you to go through a process, so you have to make the effort to focus not only in what you want to say, but also in the many emotions, and feelings that it evokes.  If you, then, focus in this, you may reap the benefits of a well discerned experience which will guide you to have an objective perspective of your experiences.

Through writing the expression of feelings, clarification and structuration of ideas can become an excellent virtue, which in turn could lead us to peaceful mind and peaceful hearts.

It does not matter what you write, start writing...

“A good memory is no match for a bad pen nib.”

‘The palest ink is more reliable than the most powerful memory.’[1]

In my daily work, many times people will come to me and ask; “what can I do to change x?” as if in the course of 45 mi

nutes life could be solved and reshaped. The reality is that life takes time to be reshaped, and issues take attention and effort to be resolved. So, drawing from the above popular proverb, I always invite people to start keeping a journal. At first they are surprised and, in a way reluctant to do it. This is usually because they are concerned about the safety of their thoughts or the time it will take for them to do it. That, however, is the point! They will express their reluctance, my reply will be “if you want to know what you can do to change, you have to be aware of what you are doing, and you have to be able to review and see what you have done during a day, a week, a month.” The problem here is that people expect solutions without effort, but our lives require time and effort in order to be fulfilled. So it is no wonder that we are reluctant to sit down and spend some time putting our thoughts together and feeling uncomfortable when we see what we desire to make better. Therefore, we have to be able to understand that if we want to have the chance to review our life, it will be helpful to keep track of what we are doing or at least the most important events, feelings, happenings of our life… and writing them down is a pretty good exercise to do so. Writing them will help you to:

1. Clarify your thoughts: once the day is over you will be looking in retrospective and, probably, with the same intensity of feelings, passion, anger or joy at what happened during the day. However, you will be able to record them in a calmer way.
2.  Relax: whenever you are in a situation of anger for example, you can see how the first pen strokes can be in disarray and indented on the paper, and how as you keep writing they become more ordered and light.
3. Think what is next: you can write what just happened and what you would like to happen in the future. Maybe after some days you may revisit that page and totally change your mind, but at least you can see the progression of your feelings.

So, it does not matter what you write, start writing and it will help you to understand its purpose!

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[1] http://ask.metafilter.com/247533/Is-this-really-an-ancient-Chinese-proverb

Where Should I Start Writing my Mind…

Are you expecting me to keep a blog? No way…

For many years I have refused to keep a blog, and I have been averse to the idea of even opening one. But I have been required to have one if I want to complete the work of my class. Yes, I am a newbie in writing blogs, and I don’t have the even most minimal idea of how to start a blog. Nevertheless, if we consider that journaling or diary writing is the father of blogging, then I can consider myself an expert.

I started keeping a journal when I was thirteen years old, and I was pretty faithful to it. A page will be filled with the happenings of my life and things that I considered important every day. You could find any topic and any feeling on it, but in order to read it you would have to read Spanish, English and Tagalog. It recounted my life in the different places where I have lived, the relationships I formed with people of different cultures and languages, and of course my joys and sorrows. I did keep my journaling habit till the age of 37, when for a good reason I decided to stop writing, and I decided to burn my journals, many of them! It was the time I was working in the Philippines and it was my time to move back to the USA. I decided to burn all those stories written in those journals because I did not want them to get lost in the middle of my moving back to this country. It was a tough decision, but the best choice, since I was shipping my books, and I did not want my life scattered throughout the world in case the books were lost.

And here we are, I have to restart my writing habit, which by coincidence match my restarting the journal-keeping habit. It has not been easy since I have no idea about what I want to write. The journal is more for my personal keeping; recounting my important moments. However, the blog is for everyone to read. The journal is somehow permanent. In other words, if it is not by some external force, it will be there for all the time. As to the blogging posts, I have no idea how long they will exist, or if by mistake they will disappear. I mean, just think of platforms like friendster, or myspace; they were not blogging platforms per se, but they were promising social media outlets. yet they dissolved after few years of their rising. It is also important to think that when we write journals, many times it is for ourselves and not for others. So it is very different from blogging which by its nature requires a writing style which stands alone even if it belongs to particular segment. My question is then, how can I appeal to an audience who is accustomed to the ephemeral nature of social media technologies with something that is as personal and full of passion for me as an everyday recounting of things that are important to me, namely journal or blog? How can I help people to put in their minds that even if things in social media are ephemeral, they have to be truthful as they are in ordinary ways of communication, and personal relationships?

I am then confronted with the decision to write either with the desire to make a difference, or to write with the desire to get lots of likes and followers, but be gone with the wind. So my hope is that I will write to contribute with realistic, to the point, and short blogs which could impact the life of my readers as well as mine.

Therefore, bring it on! Where is the piece of paper and the pencil, or better to say where should I start writing my mind…

To know more about the author visit:

     https://www.linkedin.com/in/alejandrorodriguez29

You could also read:

     * 23 Questions for Prospective Bloggers - Is a Blog Right for You? - article

     * How to Start a Blog - video