1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy 2. Submissive to everything, open, listening 3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house 4. Be in love with yr life 5. Something that you feel will find its own form 6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind 7. Blow as deep as you want to blow 8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind 9. The unspeakable visions of the individual 10. No time for poetry but exactly what is 11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest 12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you 13. Remove literary, grammatical...

Ever since I started a blog, people have asked me where I find my inspiration. My main source of inspiration comes from real life experiences, which is why the vast majority of my writing is non-fiction. In 2011, I wrote a list of 80 Journal Writing Prompts, which was in response to the repetitive emails asking me for advice for inspiration. The journal writing prompts were posted in April of 2011, and quickly became the most visited post on my blog, and after going viral, received an average of 20,000 visits per day for several months thereafter. I knew I had stumbled upon an idea, if even...

"Imagination disposes of everything: it creates beauty, justice and happiness—which is everything in this world." -Blaise Pascal

For years I was convinced that somethings wrong with me, simply because I have always been caring and nurturing, a quality often associated with femininity or male homosexuality.

Ode to the random thoughts notebook; what it taught me about life, writing, and everything in between.

I have learned a lot in my life, but perhaps the greatest lessons in life, I have learned from writing. This is what writing has taught me about life.

Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations. ― George Orwell

Lately I have been reading through old journal entries in search of patterns, specifically looking for examples of how my life has changed, and coincidentally, how my perceptions and opinions have changed.

I recently found this old box of cassette tapes that I recorded when I was a child. The tapes were found at the bottom of a cardboard box my father packed away when we moved to my second home back in the 1980s.

Stay undecided. Don't be too quick to decide on what you want to do with your life, or where you will eventually end up. Life is full of changes, often unexpectedly, and despite our best intentions and planning, everything can change at an instant. Be different. Wholeheartedly resist the sometimes overwhelming urge to be like everyone else. Be yourself. Whomever you may be, don't ever let anyone else tell you who to be, what to believe, how to think, etc. Go your own way. Never follow the lead of anyone else, especially if you do not have any desire to follow in the footsteps...

In Loving Memory Of My Father, Harvey L. Slatin. August 17, 1915 - February 23, 2013 (Age 97) My father taught me everything he knew about life. And while I cannot possibly cover everything, I took notes about what we considered to be most important. But as for the important things, everything I needed to know about life, I learned from my father.

130 Journal Writing Prompts by Thomas W.P. Slatin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at www.tomslatin.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.tomslatin.com/legal/copyright/. Name something you lost or gave away that can never be replaced. What 5 websites do you visit often, and why? Name a totally useless possession and how you came to acquire it. What music album would be used for a movie about your life? List your bad habits and/or addictions and what you have tried...

This is a generalized list of things in life that will never remain the same, despite our best attempts to keep them as such. People, places, and things change, and believe it or not, but over time the way you look at life and the feelings you have toward it and everything else will eventually change as well. In fact, everything you know now will be completely different 10, 20, or even 30 years from now. I came to this realization recently on a trip to Long Island with my father. We visited a couple of the places where I used to work, spend time, visit, and the place Angie and I used...

24 February 1990 their, Hey, they're, Udo!-- there, THIS EXCITING TIME & CONDITIONS REPORT IS PROVIDED TO YOU AT NO COST (Rates May Increase Next Year!) TIME: 9:47 A.M. TEMPERATURES FORCAST TODAY: HIGH: 67º F., LOW: 37º F. HUMIDITY: 60% BAROMETER: 30.20" Hg.↔ PRECIPITATION PREVIOUS 24 HRS: 0.00" PRECIPITATION TO DATE: 14.88"NORMAL PRECIP TO DATE: 13.32" FORECAST NEXT 24 HRS: CLEAR TODAY IN HISTORY: Titan launched in 1960.