Be like an athlete training for the Olympic Games. Fill a journal jar with the Writer's Digest daily prompts. Print out the pages of prompts, cut them into strips and store them inside the jar. Sit the jar on your desk and randomly select a prompt when you want to do some warm ups. I use a jar like this when I begin a session with a class that are trained to make writing a daily practice.

The British Museum has a stunning collection of elaborate Egyptian mummies and coffins. As I wandered around, mouth open in wonderment, I was remembered the time my Year 12 class made funky coffins in their visual diaries and then wrote pieces about death. The Emory Collection is one place to see some wonderful Egyptian artefacts. Design a coffin and see what rises from your word cauldron.

I am fascinated by the dimensions of narrative and so happening upon these two Australian sites was like finding treasure in Aladdin's Cave.

Fellow Australian, Sharon Boggon runs a project called Shareware. Sharon says that "In the past explorers used beads as a means of exchange in order to open new trading routes just as the development of the silicon chip has opened up a means of exchange in the "information" age." She has devoted a section of her site to providing a dictionary of embroidery stitches. She requested that people who use this resource send her a piece of fabric, or a button, or some lace or ribbon. If items have a story associated with them she wants to know about them. Sharon uses these objects in a work to provoke ideas about the slippery exchange between the virtual and the real. Personally I am intrigued by the stories that can be woven from these artifacts.


Another of Sharon's fascinating and highly innovative projects is Playing False. Playing False was a body of work Sharon produced for an exhibition "Playing False" held at the ACT Craft Gallery, Canberra in September 1997. In this series of panels she explored how women are representing themselves on the World Wide Web and the connection between 'home making' and 'home page'.

David Chin, an inventive Australian, is running a collaborative photographic project online under the title A Picture’s Worth. David is soliciting images and an associated story from the public. "Visitors are invited to share the memories, emotions or creative stories triggered by a photograph of personal significance." David Chin has been doing this since August 2003 so that now there are nearly 300 + photo essays published. A new image is going online almost daily.

Rummage through your draws. Pull out photographs and buttons, ribbon, fabric. Lace, old clothes and hats. Drape an old fur around yourself.

There are thousands of stories just waiting to be written. When you have written the story put it in your visual journal with the photograph or artifact.