Resurrecting Proust
Unearthing Personal Narratives through Journaling
By CoCo Harris
Smashwords Edition Copyright ©2010 by CoCo Harris
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Showcasing the Art of Literary Personal Narratives
The independent literary imprint with a focus on publishing personal narratives of various forms; and examining the journal-memoir connection.
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Telling Our Stories Press
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Cover Photograph: “Sunmist” by W. Clayton Scott
Cover Design: B. Parmley, M. Riley & 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
On the Art of Creative Journal Writing
Part II On Craft: The Techniques
On the Craft of Journal Writing
Technique #3: Artistic Entries
Technique #7: Written Journeys
Technique #9: Alternative Viewpoints
Part III On the Art and Craft: Generating Narratives
The Corners of My Mind: Part I
The Corners of My Mind: Part II
Part IVThe Techniques in Action
Temporal Meanderings of a Hazy Mind
How to Lose Your Hair w/o Losing Your Sanity
Me in 100 Delilah Rose O’Connor
The Proust Questionnaire with Responses by Marcel Proust
Select Journal and Memoir Resources
We must never be afraid to go too far, for truth lies beyond.
Marcel Proust
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.