how permission to write badly helps us to strike gold
ROOT + WRITE sign-up closes tomorrow
“Give yourself permission to write the worst shit in the world….”
It’s one day in the big homogenous day of the second summer of lockdowns and I am on ZOOM with the writing great, Natalie Goldberg. Hearing her speak these words in her Brooklyn drawl is ear candy and freedom music. Along with over two thousand other eager beavers, we are receiving her tutoring on writing practice, and filling pages with penned words from her prompts.
There is nothing complicated about this.
Hear prompt.
Pick up pen.
Start writing, and don’t stop until the timer goes off.
10 minutes.
15 minutes.
Keep going.
Not stopping to change grammar or spelling or making things logical.
These are the rules, it is important that we adhere to them becuase the aim is to burn through to first thoughts, to the place where energy is unobstructed by social politness or the internal censor, to the place where you are writing what your mind actually sees and feels, not what it thinks it should see or feel. It’s a great opportunity to capture the oddities of your mind. Explore the rugged edge of thought. Like grating a carrot, give the paper the colorful coleslaw of your conciousness.
Natalie Goldberg.
Writing Down The Bones.
Simple…
And in practice not so easy. The minute the pen starts to empty itself across the lines along pops up the well known editor/critic will pop by and want to cross things out, change a whole sentence, not say that thing because that this is just not ok.
When we keep our hand moving we move through these thoughts that are censoring and sense making, civilising and stopping. This magic happens. Something elese emerges. While a part of us is busy worrying about what we’re writing, we are also writing. Those fresh, alive, untamed, words are pouring out. As we begin, this is hapazard and messy and feels like the worst shit in the world, but there is gold in that shit.
We loosen up.
We start to unfurl.
We let rip.
Stories emerge. Glimmers of memories and images, characters and tall tales.
If we continue to work with this raw matter, it will draw us deeper and deeper into ourselves, but not in a neurotic way. We will begin to see the rich garden we have inside us and use that for writing.
N.G.
Things become clearer when we write. Over time we excavate and soften our hunched shoulders.
Tensions can unravel, ways ahead can emerge, stories bubble up, feelings can roam and take curious shapes, our thoughts scattering and condensing. We validate our lives and are seen by ourselves. Witnessed by our writing comrades in our brave practice of showing up to the page.
If you feel drawn to more personal expression, more time to write and create and spend reflecting, but are worried that this whole pursuit is self-indulgent navel gazing, I hear you. Our natural inclinations to self understanding, to making something, to finding more confidence in our own voice, standing more for what we believe in, in our own longings and stories and lives can feel beaten at first thought from our heavily internalised patriarchal culture.
Bloody women, bloody queers, bloody those people, bloody those people with their feelings and thoughts and rages and neediness and messiness and….
For those parts in us, I offer them the work of Melissa Febos
I have committed this betrayal of my own experience innumerable times. But I am done agreeing with my peers spit on the idea of writing as transofmration, as catharsis, as - dare I say - therapy. Tell me: who is writing in their therapeutic diary and then dashing it off to be published? I don’t know who there supposedly self-indulgent (and extravagently well-connected) narcissistd are. But I suspect that when people denigrate them in the abstract, they are picturing women. In finished refrring, in a derogatory way, to stories of body and sex and gender and violence and joy and childhood and family as navel-gazing.
Melissa Febos.
’In praise of navel-gazing’ from Body Work.
I welcome you to come along as you are and see what happens. With plenty of support and gentle cheerleading, guidance and cameraderie.
Together we write.
ROOT + WRITE starts this Wednesday 6th March. You will receive
3x 2hour live sessions
ongoing community support and connection via Padlet
all of the session recordings and resources added to Padlet
Three Wednesdays in March 6th, 13th and 20th. 6-8pm GMT.
£42.50 (supported) £85 (standard) £125 (supporting)
Tiered pricing is available for this offering, depending on your financial situation.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate it hit reply and fire away.
See you in class,
Kathryn
Small increments of writing time may matter more than we could guess. One thing leads to many — swerving off, linking up, opening of voices and images and memories. Nearby notebooks — or iPads or tablets or laptops — are surely helpful.
Your People’s Poet Laureate Naomi Shihab Nye on Brain Pickings.
