The Writer Within

Decks of inspirational cards can be of great support for self-care and offer invitations for an enriching refresh of writing as a personal practice and beyond. That can definitely be said of Nina Karnikowki’s The Writer Within: 50 journaling prompt cards to inspire and transform.

The cards themselves are in beautifully muted colors with delightful designs created by Atelier Bingo, who are a French duo of illustrators called Maxime Proue and Adele Faureau.

Karnikowki has had a dedicated journaling practice for most of her life, she says in the small book that accompanies the card deck. She has found that her daily journaling ritual has been a “cornerstone of [her] mental health and creative practice.” “The cards are about thinking, as much as they are about writing, and are designed to help you look at the world as if it could be otherwise,” she says.

I have found that the cards do “soothe and uplift,” which was Karnikowski’s intention, as well as to extend “a loving hand to yourself.” From that place you can extend a loving hand to others—good advice with which I agree.

Tips are offered on creating your journaling ritual including where, when, how, and what. The “how” is by hand as it “allows emotions to move through our bodies in a more physical way.”

Karnikowski also offers some guidance on “reading well” with some suggested book titles such as Dani Shapiro’s Still Writing and Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones.

The ten card categories are Connected, Inspired, Calm, Free, Creative, Confident, Activated, Transformed, Compassionate, and Grateful.

As is the case with any sort of deck, you can choose cards at random. I liked Karnikowski’s suggestion to choose a feeling you want to summon for the day and choose a card from that category. You could stay with the same category all week, using the five Grateful cards for example, and learn to practice “enoughness.”

I appreciated the cards in the Connected category, including “Find your symbols,” “Write a love letter to Earth,” and “Explore object writing.” Writing directly to an everyday object such as a flower or a book can be very freeing, as Karnikowski suggests. “We might subtly be writing about ourselves, but in a way that doesn’t feel direct or confrontational.”

Among the five cards in the Creative category are “Cut it up,” “Write as another species,” and “Experiment with random words.” Old magazines are good for finding random words or pairs of words which can be mixed up and rearranged, then glued down on paper. “This is about flexing your intuition and freeing yourself from fixed neural and linguistic patterns that can get you stuck in creative ruts,” Karnikowski advises.

One of the five cards in the Confident category is “Emulate confidence.” The suggestion is to “bring to mind the most fearless human you can think of, and write about all the ways their confidence inspires you.” There are some questions on which to reflect and a suggestion to rewrite a particularly powerful sentence in an affirming, active voice and post it somewhere as a daily reminder.

The cards in The Writer Within deck, along with the booklet, are a wonderful companion to personal writing with all sorts of suggestions to nurture your writing, be present, and “find your daily flow.”