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Heritage Field Journaling

Preparing for Journaling in the Field


This three-step activity for bloggers aims to get you started with your own travel blog writing. It takes you through the design of three posts to your blog. The 3 steps aim to give you direct practice in journaling, making field notes, preparing for fieldwork and keeping a record of your practice for later analysis. You will need notebooks for your fieldnotes. I always have a stock of these Black n' Red. The wire bound spine lets the notebook open flat and the hardback provides support for writing when standing up. 



The other learning objectives are to understand how human memory and passing time have been conceptualised and how these can help in your evolving identity as a productive writer. Finally, it is an opportunity to start to think about the literary concepts of the addressee and deixis.

Google Blogger is free web logging software with free server space. Please try a Google Blogspot, if you have not already set up your blog with another provider. As you can see, I use Google Blogger for this magazine style blog, TRAVEL WRITERS ONLINE Google Blogger works simply through Google's Chrome web browser. 

You will need the 5 free Apps: Google Photos, Google Keep, Google Chat, Google Docs and Google Drive on your mobile phone. Please click on my heritage field journaling icon, below, to access and view all the free Apps from Google...


The Pantheon, Paris., 9 September 2019, Photo: C. Mansfield

What is the Writer's Imaginary?

Sartre used to ask friends to think of the Pantheon in Paris, without the photo above, of course. And they could easily conjure the building into their imaginaries. Then, he’d ask ‘How many pillars does it have?’ They could not count them in their imaginaries. The imaginary is qualitative, Sartre believed.

Step 1 - Your Blog Post 1 for this Exercise

Now, from your own imaginary, please recall a building, that you know. A building that you can easily visit over the next day or two. So it needs to be local in your town or street. I am concerned with urban space in my research so most of my examples are of the built heritage in place inquiry and place-making. Do some journaling from your imaginary now, in handwritten form so that you can later use Google Lens within Google Photos to transcribe your handwritten notes for you. Journaling from a cold start often needs dialogue to initiate it. You can create dialogue for yourself by writing a question first of all. 

How many windows does my building have? When was I last there? What colour is the door painted? What is the building used for? What emotion does it recall for me? Is it noisy or calm?

Be sure to inlcude a quantitative question to yourself so that you can test Sartre's idea of the imaginary. For example, how many panes of glass in the windows? How many steps to the front door? 

This is your first piece of journaling. Think of it as an experimental exercise. Consider your blog as your laboratory to experiment with writing in public as one of your instruments of inquiry.

Notice I mention journaling, this is a formal process which we developed during the research for our Routledge book on travel writing for tourism and place branding. Using your notebook, please date and write legibly enough for the handwriting to be scanned and converted by Google Lens within the Google Photos App. Your journaling forms an archive of your thinking at that time in your research process. When you are in range of free wifi, please scan your handwritten pages and upload to Google Photos on your phone. 

Now, please copy + paste, your scanned journaling into either Google Keep or your wordprocessing application. Using Google Docs, of course, will keep all your work in one family of packages.  You will probably want to intervene and edit your field notes. When you know that someone will read what you write you can sense a demand on you as a writer. 

When you have typed-up your blog entry and published it, please return to your journaling and leave a note to yourself of what you changed to go public with your writing. Ask yourself why you amended anything as you typed up for a public readership. Please make a note that reason back into your handwritten journaling. 

Your chosen place must be very vivid in your imaginary by now, so try the Sartre experiment and count the visible windows of the building. How many panels in the door? What colour is the stonework? What type of building material is used in the wall? Can you name any plants that are growing there? If it is an old castle or tower, how many battlements can you see?

I surprised myself with this last question when I called to mind the Leroy Tower in the centre of Caen, Normandy. I did not remember that the tower had such well-defined battlements and crenels. 

La Tour Leroy, Caen. Photo: C. Mansfield, 8:45am 16 Sept 2021

Step 2

Later, preferably after 2 days, please go out to visit the exact spot in your first blog entry, based on the place in your imaginary ... continued. Please go to next post ... all these posts were updated on 7th July 2023. 

The acitivity for Step 2 was published at 5pm London time on 30th October 2022. Go to Step 2 - click here. 

The final step, Step 3, was published at 5pm UK time on Tuesday 1st November 2022. 

Process, patience and elapsed time are important in developing your writing methods.

‘A patient labour giving form to our impatience for freedom’ 

   - Foucault



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