Resurrecting Proust: Unearthing Personal Narratives through Journaling

By CoCo Harris

~Bridges the journal-memoir connection
~Suggests techniques along with an array of story-generating prompts
~Provides an excellent resource for extracting
expressive and creative personal narratives
~Mines the depths of which personal writing can play an integral part in unearthing your life stories
~Helps you to follow the story of your inner life
To the place where memory meets insight

• Language: English
• Publisher: Telling Our Stories Press
• Release date: Jan 9, 2011
• ISBN: 9780982922828

CoCo Harris

CoCo Harris is constantly exploring the notion of how we tell the stories of our lives.

Book preview

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ROLL: A Collection of Personal Narratives

TURNS: A Collection of Memoir Chapbooks

RESURRECTING PROUST: Unearthing

Personal Narratives through Journaling

THE BRIDGE: A Companion Journal for

Unearthing Personal Narratives and Memoir

SO LONG: Short Memoirs of Loss and Remembrance

MEMOIR POETIC of a NAKED COP

MY CIA: A Memoir

EL PUENTE: Un Diario Complementario para

Descubrir Narrativas y Memorias Personales

Resurrecting Proust

Unearthing Personal Narratives

through Journaling

CoCo Harris

TELLING OUR STORIES PRESS

Showcasing the Art of Literary Personal Narratives

Published by Telling Our Stories Press

The independent literary imprint with a focus on

the art of short memoir and personal narratives.

Copyright 2010 by CoCo Harris

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

Requests for information should be forwarded to:

Telling Our Stories Press

http://www.TellingOurStoriesPress.com

Cover Art: CLOUDS by Remi Nneka Des-Ogugua

Cover Design: CoCo Harris

For the O-Girls

and

Thank you O-Girls.

Thank you George for

all your love and support.

Thanks to Gloria Jean Harris for

always being my number one fan;

and to Tonya Hunter and LaZar Harris

who have always inspired me; and to Vernetta

Keith Nurridin, one of my biggest cheerleaders.

Thanks to Nancy Mulcare for being on the west coast

when I really needed you; and to Leif Sloan for the very

timely passports into and out of the Pacific Northwest.

I am grateful for the life and writings of

Anais Nin, Marcel Proust, and Carl Jung.

I am thankful for my entire Spalding MFA family.

I am beholden to my Howard University experience.

I am indebted to the pioneering work of Tristine Rainer,

Christina Baldwin, Katheleen Adams, and James Pennebaker.

I appreciate all those who shared their journaled-memoir; and

I thank Juyanne James and Claudia Ricci for their assistance.

"…(a world coming out of a cup) is Proust signature, and he hocks us over and over with surprises, jolts us into a discovery of just how unmapped, how dimensional the world, our world —our selves—really might be."

—Arnold Weinstein, Recovering Your Story

Contents

Preface

Author’s Note

Part I On the Art

On the Art of Creative Journal Writing

It Factors

Most Importantly

Part II On Craft: The Techniques

On the Craft of Journal Writing

Technique #1: Freeverse

Technique #2: Lists

Technique #3: Artistic Entries

Technique #4: Poems

Technique #5: Dialogues

Technique #6: Letters

Technique #7: Written Journeys

Technique #8: Portraits

Technique #9: Alternative Viewpoints

Part III On the Art and Craft: Generating Narratives

Dear Diary, It’s me

Who Am I in 100?

The Many Faces of Me

Ego vs. SuperEgo

Mirror rorriM

The Name Game

My Gifts

Inheritance

Words I Live By

Boundaries

U Tunes

I Believe

Personal Library

Make Up

Inhaling

That was Then

This is Now

Miracles

Life List

Super Being

Living the Lie

On Death & Dying

Sacred Moments

A Thousand Words

Why???

Words that Stick

Never!

Stupidity

Gratuity

Radius

Long Distance

Friend Gone Foe

Recurring Dream

Mentors

Dear God…

Exhaling

Once Upon a Time

Reality Check

Legacy

The Corners of My Mind: Part I

The Corners of My Mind: Part II

To Live

Talk to Your Fears

Living in You-topia

Time Capsule

It was the Best of Times

It was the Worst of Times

Skeletons

Closure

1 Thing

Lessons Learned

When I’m Gone

Crisis

Surrender

1 Problem

Past Times Different Selves

Part IV The Techniques in Action

Breathtaking

I am a Journal Writer

I Believe

How to Lose Your Hair w/o Losing Your Sanity

Me in 100 Diane Ross

Who Am I?

A Thousand Words

Chalk it Up

Not to Disturb the Quiet

Dialogue Scenarios

Dear God

My Passage to India

Wendy’s Honduras

A Languishing Hand

The Doll

Untitled

The Web

Appendix I:

The Proust Questionnaire with Responses by Marcel Proust

Appendix II:

Select Journal and Memoir Resources

We must never be afraid to go too far, for truth lies beyond.

Marcel Proust

Preface

He didn’t invent it, but he owns it: the Proust Questionnaire. A questionnaire devised by Antoinette Faure, the daughter of the 19th century French president, was taken by Marcel Proust at the ages of 14 and 20. Although he completed it only twice, his name has since become associated with this set of 23 questions that was once the bourgeoisie parlor game of Paris.

At social gatherings in the late 1800s, the social and literary elite would answer this set of questions and share their responses in a game-like fashion. In an 1892 article, Proust published his answers as Salon Confidences Written by Marcel, in La Revue Illustrée XV and this Parisian parlor game later became famously associated with his name after his death in 1922.

Now, in the 21st century, versions of the Proust Questionnaire have shown up in a wide array of magazines, newspapers, blogs, and even on talk shows. This post-modern resurgence of related questionnaires has illustrated the desire of readers and writers alike to stop and take a quick look at who they are and form answers based on a set of specified questions.

Well over a century later, and long after the questionnaire became vogue, a host of such quizzes have crept onto our computer screens by way of myriad web sites, social networking sites, and scores of emails; which, at best, only offer small morsels of insight into the psyche and soul of the queried; and at worst, provide an assortment of collected trivia.

Resurrecting Proust encourages much more than trivia