Movement and Rhythm

In ‘The Poetic Principle’, Edgar Allen Poe says,

I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty.

Poets out there will probably feel comfortable with that definition. Prose writers perhaps less so. But the line between poetry and prose is a blurred one, and those of us who write prose would also do well to embrace it.

Virginia Woolf describes how,

A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it ... 

Our job then is to transfer that life, movement, and rhythm into words on a page, that others may know it.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, in his journal, presents us with a fine example of how it reads when you do it well. This is his description of the movement and rhythm of a wave.

Aug. 13 — Heavy seas: we walked along the sea wall to the Kennaway Tunnel to watch them. The wave breaks in this order — the crest of the barrel 'doubling' (that, a boatman said, is the word in use) is broken into a bush of foam, which, if you search it, is a lace and tangle of jumping sprays; then breaking down these grow to a sort of shaggy quilt tumbling up the beach; thirdly this unfolds into a sheet of clear foam and running forward it leaves and laps the wave reaches its greatest height upon the shore and at the same time its greatest clearness and simplicity; after that, raking on the shingle and so on, it is forked and torn and, as it commonly has a pitch or lurch to one side besides its backdraught, these rents widen; they spread and mix and the water clears and escapes to the sea transparent and keeping in the end nothing of its white except in long dribble-bubble strings which trace its set and flow.

Wild words indeed.

Wild words have a broad range of expression, and vocabulary. The verbs are strong, and varied. They mostly stand alone.

When describing a person’s passage down a street, that person doesn’t just run, they canter, charge, and gallop. When describing their conversation, they don’t just talk, they squeak, they howl, and they rant. Strong verbs rarely need an adjective. Adjectives are used with great prudence.

As living, breathing creatures, Wild words are flexible and malleable. The wild storyteller plays with rhythm for strongest effect. A rhythm can be said to be a ‘regular recurrence or pattern in time’.

Wild words have rhythms, as varied as the gaits of the numerous wild creatures.

Rhythm can be achieved in many ways: including by choice of sentence length, by use of white space, by assonance, resonance and rhyme.

The basis of their rhythm is iambic, the di-DUM di-DUM di-DUM that spoken English has always moved to. The wild storyteller knows that when these rules of internal rhythm are broken without good reason, the result can be clotted prose, writing that does not flow.

Wild words play skilfully with listener and reader expectations, noting the effect that a change of rhythm has on those receiving the story. 

The Monthly Writing Prompt

Write about water: the sea, a lake, river, pond, or rain storm. Describe it, in poetry or prose, with precision. Look closely, and be curious. Can you reflect and heighten all its varying moods  through the use of rhythm in your words? 
 

A Day In The Life Of A Writer: Elizabeth Ducie

When people ask me if I’m retired, I am indignant. True, I will never see 60 again, unless I take my mother-in-law’s example and start counting the years backwards.

True, I no longer have a day job that pays the bills. True, I have thrown out most of my business suits and spend my days in jeans or shorts. But I still work, I protest: I am a full-time writer!

But what does that mean? Do I work a 9-5 shift, five days a week? Do I have someone managing my time and giving me instructions? Let’s think about that.

Even without a regular alarm clock, I get up very early; usually before six o’clock. If it’s a gym day, I head to the nearest town, punish my body for a while and then return for breakfast. Otherwise I hit the laptop as soon as I am up. But either way, I am working well before many employed people.

And in the mornings, I write. Whether it’s a chapter or two of the next novel, a short story for a competition, an article or blog post, I try to get some new words down on (virtual) paper every day.

It’s the quantity of words that I use as my main measure of productivity. (In my earlier life, I was a production manager and it’s hard to drop the terminology.)

As a self-published (by choice) author, I am also responsible for marketing and sales, so there’s lots of administration and promotion to be fitted into the day. That’s my afternoon task; less creative but equally satisfying.

I knock off about tea-time in order to catch up with the early evening quizzes (my guilty secret) but will always have the laptop set up on the table in the lounge. I often return to it during the evening, although it will mainly be for lighter work, like catching up on social media (and yes, that’s work too).

With a life-style like this, weekends mean very little and so this would tend to be my timetable, whatever day the calendar is showing.

So it’s fair to say I work more than a 9-5 shift, seven days a week. But I am my own boss and I manage my own time. If I want to take a couple of hours off for coffee with a friend, or go to the hairdressers mid-week, I do.

No, I’m not retired; I am a full-time writer; and I have the best job in the world.

www.elizabethducie.co.uk

A Writer's Process: Michael Loveday

I’d like to explore here how we, as writers, might recover when faced with a creative trough.

It involves a confession – about three years ago writing and I had fallen out of love.  

What had begun as an adventure, one that easily seduced me, had now dissipated into a series of irritable, familiar and tiresome habits. I was disenchanted with a writing process that I didn’t relish, and disenchanted with my end-product. In short, I was thinking of giving up. The challenges and highs of completing an MA and my first poetry pamphlet in the same summer had left me, afterwards, wandering in something like a desert sprawling with tumbleweed. I could almost hear the wind blowing past my ears. Is that it? What do I do now? Where the hell is everybody?

What follows is an outline of the remedies I sought. They may not all work for others; but perhaps some ideas will connect if you’re ever going through an uncreative time.

(1)   I loathed the results when I put pen to paper. A voice kept telling me I wasn’t creative enough. The writing I admired most, I realised, was associated with a quality of playfulness – one that I now seemed to lack. Michael Atavar has said: “We have this idea that creativity must be a product – a book, a performance, an event. I believe that creativity is a process. It might result in some of these external things, but its main purpose is to develop an attitude within ourselves.” I decided I wanted to make my process as slow, meandering, playful, fertile as possible – as if I were fermenting some fine wine to sip in the future.  (Later, I encountered the poet Liz Berry’s description of her writing process. I drew huge inspiration from this rich, leisurely experimentation).  https://poetryschool.com/poems/sow/.

(2)   I realised that I associated pure creativity most strongly with the visual arts. Look at kids! – they’re painting before they write. I admire artists for doodling away in notebooks, making preparatory sketches. So I bought an A4 artist’s sketchbook for my drafting – cream paper, unlined. I turned the page to landscape, starting in the centre (forgetting about order and position), and filled the page outwards with my pen. I felt much closer to my creative self. 

The drafting process.

(3)   I reminded myself that other writers readily confessed to writing awful stuff. Ann Lamott labels it “the shitty first draft.” https://wrd.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/1-Shitty%20First%20Drafts.pdf

Raymond Carver talked about how his first drafts “are dreadful”; how he regularly went through between 10 and 30 drafts to get a piece of writing right. 

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3059/the-art-of-fiction-no-76-raymond-carver

I became increasingly fascinated with the way it was possible, through patient drafting, to turn base metal into… if not gold, then at least something more interesting than base metal.

More than ever before, most of the words I wrote were “wasted” – edited out; revised to the point that they were no longer the same; or seemed so embarrassing that they were hidden in a drawer. I followed a new 80/20 rule: the last 20% of a piece of writing, I told myself, takes up 80% of the time.

These three seemed to offer a key. In addition -

(4)   I hunted back through several years’ worth of old, abandoned drafts and experiments from my first few years of writing – I’d been industrious when I first started, burning with enthusiasm, before I realised how awful I was, but I’d kept all my old drafts. I sifted for places where the writing had a touch of sparkle. I didn’t find as much as I’d hoped. But I did surprise myself to see this other person, buzzing with ideas, accumulating reams of material. Had I really, once, been producing so much stuff?

I remembered the deal Julia Cameron urges us to make – Universe, look after the quality; I’ll look after the quantity.

(5)   I started using my iPhone to jot down poem / story concepts the moment they sparked, whether memories of my own life, or fiction ideas. Barely a sentence, or a couple of words each time – without saying “oh, I’ll remember that later”. Gradually the list accumulated until I had a large resource of prompts I could go to when it was writing time – just pick the one I fancied most that day, and go.

(6)   In a topsy-turvy experiment, I started using a computer for editing, instead of my beloved pen. I found I was tougher when I typed things in presentable black and white, and this seemed to push my writing to its benefit (though with drafting, I still rely on pen and A4 sketchbook, where I want access to first thoughts, as free as possible from the inner critic).

(7)   I held my nerve more and shoved first drafts “in a drawer” for longer before tinkering. Maybe not quite the mythical month that some writers argue first drafts should be set aside for. But a couple of weeks, at least. Just to see things genuinely fresh.

(8)   And I started a writing journal. A third one, in fact – to my shame, I am a serial journaller, already possessing a traditional diary (where I wrote twice a week), and a reflective learning journal for teaching (once a week). I nattered in my writing journal whenever it suited me. I babbled about: process; how I felt about edits I’d made; potential new edits to try;  sequencing and structuring of material for fantasised poem / story collections; news of rejections (boo! hiss!) or acceptances (hooray!); books I’d been reading, plays and films I’d seen; creativity generally; quotes from books that I admired. Etc, etc. Anything that nourished and consoled the process.

That uncreative tumbleweed: it’ll haunt you if you let it.

There is a long list of other things one can try (and many I’ve stuck with) to escape from it – walking, jogging, meditating, eating better food, going to see films, spending more time with other writers, time with loved ones doing anything but writing, experimenting with a drastic new haircut, smashing your fists against rocks (er – hang on – maybe forget about those last two).

In the end I have, I think, settled in a better place in terms of process: I’ve decided that being a writer demands a mingling of doubt and faith that is disconcerting to experience, but one that I can live with for now.

If you don’t doubt your work, don’t interrogate your themes and narratives, worry about your sentences, you may never push your writing enough until it is ready to share publically (if that’s what you want to do – admittedly a big if).

If you don’t have long-term faith in what you are trying to achieve, you will falter at hurdles – when obstacles materialise in the writing, or when rejections appear, or when low confidence risks leading you into the desert.

Maybe, in fact, negotiating the intersection of these two opposing forces – doubt and faith – is the mission of the writer.

In other words, if you spend enough time thinking “it’s not good enough”, it has a chance of becoming “good enough”. It’s the kind of logical and existential paradox that will trigger cycles of crisis and recovery. (May all artists and writers be creatively fruitful in the land of their suffering! Ha!) But the reality is more mundane: one step at a time, what if I cut this word here, or change that one, or add this one? Would it read more strangely, more beautifully, more powerfully? Can I at least have some fun trying?

 www.michaelloveday.co.uk

Not Enough Time

The year-long mentoring scheme starts in October, and I’ve been talking to people about it: the commitment, the challenges, and the benefits.
 
Some writers have signed up without hesitation because it’s the opportunity they’ve been waiting for to birth that long dreamed-of book-child.
 
There have also been people who’ve sent an initial, enthusiastic YES, followed by another email hard on the heels of the first, qualifying that with an  umm… err… perhaps I responded too quickly…
 
Their reason for changing their mind is usually a variation on the theme of I just don’t think I’ll have the time. They often add, I’ll come back to you next year. I’ll have more time and energy when…
 
a) I give up my job
b) my children leave home
c) the divorce has gone through
d) I retire
e) my health is better
 
Now, if you’re one of those in-then-out-of-the-scheme people, just watch what’s happening to you now.  Are you beginning to sink in your seat, embarrassed, or shamed?
 
If so, is that because you feel you responded without thinking in that first email? Or because, in sending the second email, you fear you’re failing in your writerly quest to get that book finished, and out there?  Or is it just because you changed your mind?
 
To allay one concern, I’ll say, as the receiver of those two emails, that it’s no problem for me if you change your mind like that. I believe it’s a basic human right to re-think something.
 
I’ll also say, unequivocally, that if you responded to that first email without thinking, that’s brilliant. Do that more. Expose your instinctual animal self more.
 
On the subject of failing; the only person you make a contract with when you decide to write a book, is yourself. So, the only person you can fail, is yourself.  A feeling of failure is only useful for one thing, for making us examine at how we’ve set up our expectations, in order to renegotiate them with ourselves. 
 
The most important job for us as writers, arguable more important than the act of writing itself, is to raise our confidence, and then raise it some more. To keep remembering we are skilled in the art of sitting down in front of the blank page. That means hitting our own targets. It’s almost irrelevant whether that’s writing for four hours a day, or fifteen minutes a week.  If we keep doing it, one day we find it’s done.
 
When you’ve negotiated a realistic contract with yourself, start saying no to the I’m a failure line in your head. Life is tough enough, why make it harder by beating yourself up?
 
I’m very grateful indeed to the in-then-out-of-the-scheme-people because they point up an internal message that sabotages so many of us writers- I don’t have time.
 
I know very well that feeling of overwhelm when thinking about fitting writing into a busy schedule of work, childcare and domestic tasks. However, I’d say that the idea that we’ll have more time in the future is largely an illusion.
 
Reality check 1: there is enough time to write.
 
Reality check 2: you will never have more time than you do now.
 
We can invent all sorts of stories about it, but actually, none of us have any idea what the future will hold. Chances are it will also be busy. Ever noticed how human beings like to fill time in any way they can?
 
My general line is that we need to know how to deal with that feeling of overwhelm, of constriction, of too-much-ness, and write despite the busyness, rather than waiting for more space. Scary? Yes, I know.
 
Perhaps this message from Stephen King, via Neil Gaiman will help,

“I think the most important thing I learned from Stephen King I learned as a teenager, reading King's book of essays on horror and on writing, Danse Macabre. In there he points out that if you just write a page a day, just 300 words, at the end of a year you'd have a novel. It was immensely reassuring - suddenly something huge and impossible became strangely easy. As an adult, it's how I've written books I haven't had the time to write.”
 
So much more than we expect can be achieved, if we put down the procrastinating.

 

The Monthly Writing Prompt

Here’s a challenge for you:  if you have 15 minutes spare in a day, how about using that to write, rather than to think about when that next clear hour will come up? Do that every day for a month.  

The Roaring Sea

I used to live close to the sea in Devon. Now I live in the mountains in France.

The change is refreshing. My environment is largely untouched by human hand and is therefore teeming with wildlife. It’s an aliveness that endlessly enthralls me. 

But this week I am back in the UK, and with my first sight of the ocean, a wonderful and terrible sense of loss gripped me. I remembered that the roar of the sea was the first truly wild animal that I encountered and learnt to relate to, when I lived for periods of time on beaches in Devon and Spain. Running around on beaches was also where I learnt to play with words, rather than be a prisoner to them.

I used to enjoy walking the shoreline just as the tide turned, and collecting what the ocean had thrown up over night. Each day it gave gifts, wonderful and unexpected: seeds from plants in the tropics, tins of food lost from ships. It also took. I knew a woman who was walking her dog on the beach on a stormy day, when the dog was swept out to sea.

In being in close proximity to push and pull of the tide, the life and death-bringer, I also learnt a lot about the necessary process of creation and destruction in my writing.

So often we are frightened to really experiment, to take the risk to bring something truly new into being. We are equally frightened to edit, to let go of words, phrases, and paragraphs in our writing that do not work. When we hold our writing that tight, are so fearful, our words can never live.

I found that when I stood unafraid in front of the roaring sea, when I could accept the inevitable gain and loss, and find a rhythm in that process, I could also stand unafraid in front of my words in the same way. Then they were free to express their power, to be wild.

The Weekly Prompt

Go to the edge of water. It could be the sea, a lake or a river. If possible choose a body of water that moves, that seems alive.

Write about the experience. How does it sound and smell? What colours and textures are contained within it? Also think about metaphor - if it were a wild animal, what wild animal would it be? How do you feel about being lose to it- does it attract or repel you? What memories or associations does it being up?

A Writer's Process: Sue Shooter

Writing my first novel has been like journeying to destination unknown without a route map. I was crazy to set off in the first place then things became even crazier.

Downloading ideas is the easy bit, just letting them flow. I use good old-fashioned pencil and notebook. That’s how I learnt to write as a child. It’s how my head pours out its garbled contents onto paper. My scrawl is messy and no one would want to read my graphite-scribbled confusion, but my next step is to type up the sentences one by one, arranging them into some kind of order, assist the words in making their sense.

Then I edit. Then I edit. And then I edit some more.

When I’m shaping each subsequent draft I surround the creative process with various repetitive activities. I knit, ferociously. My family have accepted, without complaining, manifold garments from me over the last three years since I started writing fiction. It’s good to know how much they love me!

I also do Killer Sudokus. After making the transition from academic writing to creative writing these puzzles keep my left brain fed, watered and relatively contented. And I swim lots of laps in the local pool or walk miles on the coast path which helps clear my mind. This also has the welcome side effect of keeping me fit when my bum has to spend countless hours on the seat in front of my laptop, or when I have to stare out to sea for a long time, story-dreaming.

These activities help me into an uncontrollable ‘zone’ which is a state where I feel suspended between sheer panic I’ll fail to narrate the story as it should be told, and sheer excitement that something is emerging.

When the key to a scene or a character rises to the surface, when the story solidifies in my head like butter coming together in a churn, I know my supporting activities (aka my OCD behaviours) are working. It feels like magic is happening.

It’s possible to conclude from this description of my writing process that I am clinically insane. Who cares? I’m doing what I love, although the anxiety of whether my book will be published sends me reaching for my knitting needles…

A Packet of Nuts?

There’s a tendency to focus on the ways in which we are no longer in contact with wildness.

In his book ‘Feral’, George Monbiot bemoans that the closest we now get to nature is “feeding the ducks in the park”, and “the greatest trial of strength and ingenuity we face is opening a badly designed packet of nuts”. In short, he says, civilisation has squeezed the wildness out of our environment, and out of us. When I’m teaching in London I sometimes get rather melancholy about the absence of nature around me. Did you know that when the foundations of Trafalgar Square were dug in the 1830’s, builders exposed river gravels crammed with the bones of hippopotami, straight-tusked tigers, giant deer, giant aurochs and lions?

But the truth is that it’s not all doom and gloom.

We can choose our world view, by choosing our statistics. We can be glass half-full, rather than glass half-empty people.

After all, new forms of wildness are being discovered all the time…

Recently, a species of bird that is completely new to science, The Cambodian tailorbird (Orthotomus chaktomuk), was found - hiding in plain sight in Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh.

And it’s just been announced by World Wildlife Fund, that more than 400 new species of plants and animals have been found in the under-explored Amazon rainforest in the past four years. They include a newly discovered species of monkey that purrs like a cat, a flame-patterned lizard, a vegetarian piranha and a frog the size of a thumbnail.

So how does this relate to our wild words?

Firstly, we should never give up hope that the passion and power that has become deadened and buried through overuse and over-familiarity, can re-find it’s wildness, and right under our noses, in fact.

Finding the wild words is like finding any other wild creature. It’s in the moment of awe-filled discovery that they live. And it’s through the variety of expression and movement that they move the reader.

When those words begin to purr, when they leap and roar, it’s then we know we’ve unleashed the wild in them.

The Weekly Prompt

Write a 1000 word, fiction, or non-fiction piece, in prose or poetry, using the following prompt:

“the greatest trial of strength and ingenuity we face is opening a badly designed packet of nuts”.

First published November 19th 2013

Writing and Storytelling- to survive and to thrive

I am an integrative arts-based psychotherapist, and a creative writing tutor with a background in screenwriting. My passion is in exploring how a fusion of theories and techniques from these two disciplines might inform each other, to enable growth and healing in the therapy room and beyond.

Storytelling plays the central role that in all of our lives. As human beings, we tell stories all the time. We default into daydreaming whenever we are not involved in an immediate, absorbing task. As Gottschall (2013, p. xiv) describes, “We are, as a species, addicted to story… Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.”

Telling Stories Saves Lives

Writing, telling, reading, or listening to stories, causes the firing of neurons and the strengthening of neural pathways in the brain in same way performing the actions for real would do. Stories allow us to encounter various life obstacles in symbolic guise and to practice ways of solving them, without endangering ourselves.

In recent studies it has been found that the great majority of dreams are about “a problem that needs to be solved” Gottschall (2013, p. 52). So, it may be that stories are, as, psychologist and novelist Keith Oatley (2011, quoted in Gottschall p. 58) puts it, “the flight simulators of human social life.”

Telling stories is not a luxury for human beings, it is vital to our survival and flourishing.

In my psychotherapy practice, I’ve seen how storytelling can play a crucial role in rescuing us when ‘real’ life is unbearable. The state of dissociation, of feeling detached from a situation, often involves elements of storytelling. Below is the account of one of my clients. She describes herself as a survivor of sexual abuse.

“I could see the window from where I lay. I would look out of the window at the birds flying. I would imagine I too was flying, and that I could go anywhere, do anything. I would visit beautiful places and talk to kind people who reassured me that I would get through it. I believe this is what stopped me from going crazy, or from killing myself.”

Storytelling save lives- literally.

Organismic self-regulation

The majority of stories, both fiction and non-fiction, can be broken down into a three-act structure that goes something like this. In Act 1 the lead character’s life situation is set up. In Act 2 they encounter obstacles on the path to what they want to achieve. In Act 3, the situation is resolved. This is the emotional trajectory of the lead character, and narrative arc. It is marked by the rising of tension to the climax of the story, followed by the falling of tension to the denouement, and closure.

I refer to the work of screenwriter Lew Hunter (1994) when utilising this structural analysis for my own writing, as well as in my teaching work.  Similar dramatic elements are also cited in dramatherapy, where they form the basis of the 6-Part Story Method. (Lahad, 1992, p. 150-163).

When telling or writing a story, the storyteller lives their lead character’s journey, on a physical, emotional, and psychological level. This is equally true whether the character is themselves remembered, or fictional. I’ve found it helpful in my work to relate the storyteller’s journey to psychotherapist Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing model. He describes the activation that occurs in the body of a human animal when faced by a threat or opportunity in the environment. If successfully negotiated, this is followed by a discharge of energy from the nervous system, and the organism returns to equilibrium.

The storyteller can be seen to exhibit signs of activation in the body, when they write about, or describe, their character encountering an obstacle. I have often seen colour drain from their face, and their eyes widen at this point.  When the character overcomes the obstacle, colour floods back into the storyteller’s face, and they release a sigh. They’ve described to me the profound sense of relief that comes with this discharge of energy.

Cycles of activation through to discharge can also be identified throughout the creative process, as the storyteller encounters and negotiates the various obstacles to completing any story. Examples of the threats might include: family members coming into their writing room, having doubts about the strength of the story idea, or fearing the reaction of a therapist when information is revealed.

The human being maintains health, the organismic self-regulation ofHefferline R, and Goodwin, P. (2011, p. 247) through the process of telling and writing stories, as well as via the journey that occurs inside the story. In the language of Gestalt psychotherapy, the completing of the story enables the completion of the cycle of awareness and contact.

Re-finding the Natural Storyteller

I work with two distinct groups with respect to storytelling: creative writing students, and psychotherapy clients. I do not perceive the underlying aim of the creative writer and the therapy client to be different. I believe that unconsciously they are both primarily seeking a return to organismic equilibrium through storytelling. However, when they first talk to me, the two groups may describe their goals quite differently. While the therapy client will often speak of wanting to “feel better”. The creative writing student will “want to finish that novel” or “to get published”.

 Whether the teller labels their story fiction, or non-fiction does not affect my approach, as I believe that the story we want to tell is always a symbolic representation of issues in our lives that seek resolution, just variously disguised. Underneath everything, there is emotion, energy, that needs integrating into the system as a whole. Often when I work, I “stick with the image” (McNiff 1992, p. 55). I stay within the story, without reference to the context of the telling, aiming to enable it to become more fully formed and expressible. When the client or student has completed the story, in a way that satisfies them, they are then free, of course, to fulfil any other aims. They can choose to guard the experience of the telling as private one, or, to take their story into the public realm.

If, in the therapy room, the client has told a fictional story, useful links between symbolic representations and the ‘real’ world, and new awareness around issues, can arise spontaneously, after the telling is complete. Very often only minimal intervention needed to achieve that.  To some extent, when the hero learns how to overcome obstacles in the fictional world, the storyteller is simultaneously empowered to work with obstacles in real life.

 Of course, with some client groups I have worked with in hospital settings, it has been necessary to help clients to differentiate between what is fiction and what is fact. Where clients experience delusions or hallucinations, helping them to make distinctions between the real and imagined is a fundamental part of helping them to function well in the world.

My job, as both a psychotherapist and creative writing tutor, is to help the individual to re-find their natural storyteller. Firstly I support them to learn to trust their innate ability to tell their story. Secondly, I help them to negotiate the interruptions to the completion of that communication.

Writer’s Block

Writers use the terms writer’s block and creative block. Therapy clients also refer to ‘feeling blocked’. These terms refer to an inability to express, or to complete a creative process. Block is usually frustrating, and sometimes agonising. It can finish careers and sabotage relationships.

Peter Levine (2010) describes how the freezing of body and mind, is a life-saving strategy used throughout the animal kingdom if the flight and fight responses are not possible. However, he notes (2010, p. 56) that in human beings, in certain situations, it can become “inextricably and simultaneously coupled with intense fear and other strong negative emotions.”

Energy becomes trapped in the nervous system, and the cycle of activation through to discharge is unable to complete.

When clients or creative writing course participants are inhibited in their ability to tell a story, I often observe a freezing of the body, and mind, characterised by stilted sentences, and tense muscles. They frequently report feeling a sense of helplessness.

As the therapist or course facilitator, my first awareness of their block usually arrives via the transference. I find myself inexplicably feeling stuck in various ways. I note I am holding my breath, or tensing my muscles. Sometimes my thoughts are fragmented and I struggle myself to form words.

Interruptions To Contact

To be blocked is to experience the flow of thoughts or words as interrupted. Interruptions to the ability to tell stories often originates from the needs and desires of the individual having become fused over time, with the needs of others. Not infrequently, the other was a caregiver in childhood. Both in the therapy room and in creative writing group work, participants may initially repeat the stories that they feel they should tell, as well as defining themselves in self-limiting ways through their stories. The internalising of other’s viewpoints may manifest as negative or critical internal voices. This happens on at least two levels, as there is always a story to be told about the telling of a story!

I help those I work with to separate out the voices of others, from the expression of their own needs and desires.

My work with ‘Jed’ illustrates this. Jed approached me two years ago. He was a stooped 27 year-old man, presenting with writer’s block as well as physical health complaints. He told me that his father was a well-known poet. “I’m scared that I will never write poetry as great as my father’s” he said, “and it’s ceasing me up”. I guided him through body awareness exercises. He became aware of where the block was located in his body, as well as where he could touch into flow. Moving between the two, he found ways of “chipping away” at the block, until it dissolved into flow. I also employed narrative-making techniques. Through these he explored his sense of self.  After the fifth session he phoned me, very excited. “I’m writing. The words won’t stop coming! But now I have another problem, I’m writing a comedy screenplay, not poetry. I’ve realised that poetry isn’t my thing. It never was.”

I facilitate the bringing into awareness those aspects of self that have been disowned. What emotions has the storyteller forgotten how to feel because they were unacceptable to family, friends or society at large? What emotions are they afraid to contact because they don’t know how to contain them and therefore fear being consumed by them? The storyteller must “safely learn to contain” his or her powerful sensations, emotions and impulses without becoming overwhelmed (Levine, 2011, p. 68).

The aim is for the individual to be able to tell their story whilst staying in steady contact with the emotions involved, at an appropriate level of detail, and without either diverging from, or drowning in them.

It is usually possible to spot in stories where the teller has found it challenging to engage with certain aspects of their experience. They will diverge from, summarise, or skim over parts of the story. As the listener or reader, I disengage from the story, thus mirroring the teller’s experience.

Here I’d like to cite the example of a psychotherapy client I’ll call ‘Sue’. She was dispirited by her lack of success as a writer. We looked together at her unpublished novel. What I noticed was that every time a plot line called for anger, just before she reached the climax of the conflictual event, she cut away from the action, and began a new scene. For historical reasons, she was unable to tolerate the feeling of anger in herself, and therefore unable to write to the heart of the action. I supported Sue to learn to use the page as a vessel to contain the strong feelings in her body. When she could do that, she was able to channel anger on to the page, powerfully and vividly.  

When an individual can tell their story, unashamedly, they are able to stand proudly in the fullness of who they are. That also enables them to delight in the potential of who they might become. They can then relate authentically to others, and to their world. They discover a quality of connection that they could previously not even of dreamed of. Ironically, it’s in finding what we have in common with all other animals, that we find our unique voice as storytellers.

References:

GOTTSCHALL, J. (2013) The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human. New York: Mariner.

HUNTER, L. (1994) Lew Hunter’s Screenwriting 434. New York: Penguin.

LEVINE, P. A. (2010) In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness. Berkeley : North Atlantic Books
MCNIFF, S. (1992) Art as Medicine: Creating a Therapy of the Imagination. Boston: Shambhala.

LAHAD, M. (1992) Storymaking in Assessment Method for Coping With Stress. In S. JENNINGS (Ed.) Dramatherapy Theory and Practice II. London: Routledge.

PERLS F, HEFFERLINE R, and GOODWIN, P.  (2011) Gestalt Psychotherapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality.  Maine: Gestalt Journal Press.

PROPP, V. I. (1968) Morphology of the Folktale (L. A. Wagner, Trans. 2nd revised ed.) Austin: University of Texas Press.