Instructions for Email Submissions

1. Please include some general information about yourself. At a minimum, we encourage you to include some geographic AND age reference:

Name (which can be your full name, your initials, your first name only or nothing)
Location, which can be City, State, Country, or all
Age or age range

2. Then, choose one or more of the following and respond.

Share one of your defining moments.
Describe one of your “aha” moments.
Have you recently experienced a moment of truth?
Have you recently had a breakthrough moment or a breakaway moment –when you saw something in a new way, or changed your way of doing things?

3. How did this awareness influence who you are today? How did it influence what you want in your life, at this moment?

4. To get your juices going, we suggest you read the poem "A Power Such as the World has Never Known" by Kathe Schaaf, www.katheschaaf.com, "One of my Breakthrough Moments" by Judy Ranieri, www.thewisdombox.com and one of Margaret Wolff's aha moments, In Sweet Company Newsletter, December, 2007, www.insweetcompany

5. If you have a favorite quotation, poem, or photo; you can use that as the springboard for your writing. (*See copyright notice below.)

6. Feel free to be creative in responding to these questions. You may want to write your own poem. You can also express yourself visually – draw a picture, or make a collage. One possibility is to photograph or draw a favorite place or some cherished keepsake you find comforting. Another possibility is to draw a part of yourself, such as an eye or a hand. Whatever you decide to do, we encourage you to keep a copy for yourself and to send it as an attachment in a pdf or .jpeg format to judy@notebookproject.com. This way, if one of the notebooks takes longer to get back to us, we will have a copy of it and it will keep the project moving.

Please know that this is not about getting right. It’s about being real. It’s about trusting yourself to respond to what is in your heart and what is important for you at this moment in time. It’s about how you view the world and what is happening in it. It’s about sharing your compassion, your creativity, and your wisdom in a world starving for all three. Who you are in this moment may change tomorrow and the next day and that’s perfectly okay. Life is fluid.

*COPYRIGHT NOTICE: If you include any copyrighted property, please include that information so we may credit you or the original author/artist in future efforts stemming from this project. Include your name and location to the extent that you would like to be credited. By participating in this project you give Judy Ranieri permission to reprint any or all of the information submitted online, so please answer accordingly.

Please lend your voice to this project. My passion and commitment is renewed every time I read a new entry online or in a notebook. There is such wisdom waiting to be expressed and shared with other women. Whenever I receive contributions to The Notebook Project, whether these are brief, hastily scribbled notes, poems, essays, photos, artwork, or emails; I feel honored. And I look forward to receiving more.

The most important aspect of this project is your voice, so if anonymity helps you express yourself, you do not have to sign your name or include any indication of who you are. Because we do not know what will manifest from this effort, we encourage you to identify yourself in some way in the event we need to contact you again for interviews or another aspect of the project.

If you’ve visited the home page or read other pages of this web site, looked at the poems and sample entries, you may be ready to plunge in and participate. If so, go for it. I want to hear from you. As you get started, please see the Instructions for the Traveling Notebook, or these instructions for the Online Notebook. Please see the instruction sheet and let your imagination, heart and soul fly from there! We are the women of the world and we are letting our hearts and souls express themselves for the benefit of humankind.

Anything that is attached to or included in this book (writing, artwork, personal items, and photographs) becomes the sole property of Judy Ranieri for the purpose of The Notebook Project and/or any effort that follows. Anything that you enclose within this notebook will not be returned. Should any income producing activities follow from this project, 10% of the net proceeds will be donated to one or more charities that benefit women.

Please contact me with any questions or comments.

Judy Ranieri Director
The Notebook Project