Field Journaling Step 2

Please ensure you have completed Step1 before starting this second step. Step 1 is here  

Step 2 - Out in the Field

Later, preferably after 2 days, please visit the exact spot you described in your first blog entry, based on the place in your imaginary. You are heading outside so you will need all your field equipment, that is: warm clothes, pens for writing with ink that does not run in the rain, a hardback notebook of, I suggest, A5-sized pages that lie flat, so spiral bound is good. Your 'phone and the Google Keep App on your 'phone with your mic activated. 

Be sure to have the journaling notes from Step 1 with you so that you can see your old notes on the quantitative question you tried to answer for yourself from your imaginary. 

I bought Oxford Black n' Red A5 hardback for fieldwork

Log in your journaling notebook the date and time and any spatial landmarks to help locate the exact spot including -

Time, day, date and year, like this: 10:02am Monday 31st October 2022

Weather: bright sunshine but very cold for late October at 6°C, frost was visible on a tiled roof earlier. Your 'phone will tell you the temperature and even the compass directions.

Your Mood: slightly anxious as this is my first time journaling in the field.

Location: please use street or road name, south or north end of street, town name or suburb. For example, Southern, lower end of Moon Street, en route down to Sutton Harbour, Plymouth. 

A photo of a street corner with the street name like this will help you find your exact spot in Google Maps when back at your home base writing your full blog post.

Take care of traffic. Move to a safe place, out of the flow of pedestrians. Again, in your notebook, please sketch the intersection, junction or corner in plan, map, or rough 3D form. Only a rough sketch plan, but label something significant. Remember Google Maps can help you later, back indoors in range of wifi.

What about that quantitative question you posed to yourself back at your home base in Step 1? Write what you see and how that compares. 

Now open all your senses and write what you see and feel as you experience being in the place. Stay quite still initially, then pick a focal point eg a stone, a railing, a lower window sill and take a few paces towards it and examine it in detail. Stop and write notes, taking notes of what you as a researcher are detecting and registering. Let any emotions come through and try to record them. Touch stone and surfaces. 

Are any plants reclaiming urban space? Is it moss, lichen or pennywort? If you do not know the name of the plant, then photograph it. Google Lens might help you identify it back at your home base in range of wifi. 

Then decide on a longer, more mobile process. For example, turn and walk away for 20 metres then follow a curved path back to the front of the site. Or walk around behind it, or to the side of the building if space permits. End the movement in a position where you are safe and comfortable for note-taking again, and this time take spoken notes into Google Keep, letting in anything from the space that you can experience, eg other movement and your memory of the movement that you have just made.

Blogging from your Field Journaling 

Then go back to your lab or home-base and blog this field experience as your Post 2 in your blog. Please share the link to your blog posts in the Comments box below. Or simply paste-in the texts or extracts from your journaling to share before going on to the final step of blogging, Step 3 Autobiographic Narrative Non-Fiction. 

Step 3 instructions are published at 5pm UK time, Tuesday 1st November 2022 here on TRAVEL WRITERS ONLINE - please Follow the blog below to ensure you see the post... 

Link to Step 3