Writing It Raw

You’ve probably never heard of raw writing. Neither had I until I coined the phrase. But I should have thought to head over to Google before taking credit for anything new. The results validate the wisdom of Solomon. Three millennia ago there was already “nothing new under the sun.”

I coined the phrase, seen on the site logo graphic in the right sidebar, to describe a catch-all category for any spontaneous writing, whether it's a journal entry, free-writing on scrap paper, Natalie Goldberg-style writing practice, Julia Cameron-style morning pages, pure rants or riffs,  or even quick unedited emails and notes that talk about your day or other experiences. Raw writing forms the roots of the Tree of Life Writing,  converting unprocessed memories into the basic components of more crafted writing forms of story, essay, memoir and more.

Dreaming the Answers

In some dreams, life makes sense. In others it comes apart. Each type of dream has power. Our challenge is to remember those dreams and harness that power.

I often remember dreams, and while most are mundane, some are utterly fascinating. More than twenty years ago I began taking a few minutes soon after waking to write down the most dramatic ones, and until the last few years, I stored them on my computer (now they are hand-written in my paper journal).

Yesterday I found several “dream” files I hadn’t looked at in years. These were all dreams in which I had some sort of breakthrough in understanding. In an especially vivid one, I surprised myself by explaining a bizarrely compelling concept of God to people who held to a belief I had come to consider outmoded. I knew in the dream that they would not understand what I was saying, but I felt better for having a clear and coherent explanation of my position that respected the fact that they still clung to the one I had reevaluated.

One in a Million

A few days ago I picked this picture for a group writing prompt exercise. When I saw it, I immediately recalled a couple of hours I spent walking around that very beach on South Georgia Island ten years ago. I expected to write about the haunting din of penguin trumpeting, the smell of slimy guano, and the incredible sensation of being one of only a few dozen humans among a hundred thousand denizens of the Shanghai of penguindom.

Not surprisingly, when I looked more closely at the picture and began to write, a different story came out:

Materials May Shape the Message

Materials we use to write may shape our results. My current journal has soft brown recycled paper pages, slightly crinkled and earthy feeling. My pen has the slightest bit of drag, creating a sense of connection with nature. Perhaps this earthy setting prompted an unusual recent experience.

My hand had stopped moving while my thoughts followed a tangent.  When I noticed this, I resumed writing, picking up in the  middle of my abandoned sentence. After writing a few words, I was visually transported into a forest, walking along a brown, fern-edged path shaded by leafy green boughs. The path stretched ahead only a couple of hundred feet before disappearing around a bend. I had no idea where it led.

Re-vision Your Life

If you aren’t happy with your life as it currently is, do a re-vision and trance-form it. Let your pen rip through the bonds of limiting beliefs, restor(y)ing the magical sense of possibility and wonder you had as a young child.

This idea derived from reviewing several podcasts, interviews and other material relevant to the topic of beliefs and transformation. Through this exercise, several things have become clear:

The Beanie I Never Got

In a previous post, The Write Way to Change Your Brain, I explained how relationships with parents can affect the way we relate to the world at large. I see the truth of this in my own life. I grew up in a family that lacked language for describing any but the most basic emotions, and we didn’t talk much about even those. It’s not that I didn’t feel things — I just didn’t have words to describe, analyze, and discuss those feelings.

It’s hard to fully experience that which you can’t name, and it’s hard to be supportive of that which you aren’t apprised of. Both my parents grew up in similar circumstances. No wonder they were unable to teach me about feelings or be supportive in areas of relationships and emotions.

Writing stories and journaling has been a huge help in becoming aware of the various facets of this situation and how it developed. Some of the stories, such as the one below (written in 1998) are short, but powerful documentation:

From Grief to Hope: My Pathway to Healing Through Journaling

A Guest Post by Kathleen Pooler:

I still have the blue cloth, three-ring notebook that I created for my senior English teacher Miss Philips back in 1964. The page dividers have pictures depicting the section: hopes, beliefs, thoughts, ideas with varied colored plastic tabs where the white labels were inserted. At the time, it seemed like a silly project. What did Miss Philips know? I can still see her, pencil-thin frame, always dressed in some dark colored--grey, navy blue or black-dowdy dress or suit. Standing so straight by her desk, she never smiled or wore makeup. Her brown hair was pulled back in a tight bun and her wire-rimmed glasses dangled at the end of her nose. What in the world would I ever do with that silly notebook?

I packed the journal when I went to nursing school and every once in a while, I’d pull it out to glance through the sections. Sometimes, I’d even jot a few thoughts down. For the most part, it lay dormant. But, as I began my career and started out on my path to contribute to society as an adult, the pages started beckoning me.

Let There Be Peace on Earth

Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with me.
Let there be peace on earth
The peace that was meant to be.
With God as our father
Brothers all are we.
Let me walk with my brother
In perfect harmony.

This song, written by Sy Miller and his wife Jill Jackson, has been one of my favorites for decades. (View full lyrics here.) Unlike other popular music, I don’t recall when I became aware of it, but I do remember sitting at the piano playing it over and over again in the seventies.

Let peace begin with me ... That was a thrilling thought, even forty years ago, but the only way I knew to bring it about was “turning the other cheek.” My understanding of turning the other cheek was limited conceding and stuffing my rage to achieve a sort of unilateral cease-fire. Quite predictably, this often led to war-like eruptions later, not the peace I sought.

The Truth of a Man (or Woman)

“The truth about a man is, first of all, what it is that he keeps hidden.”

—André Malraux       000000

I owe a big thank you to Kathy Pooler for calling this quotation to my attention in her blog post Writing From Our Soul—Journey into Self. Kathy makes the important point that it can be downright painful to write deeply into your story, but good things can come of it if you persist past the superficial pain elements and explore their deeper meaning.

She mentions a specific individual and her thoughts on writing about that relationship bring a similar one to my mind. The thought of writing about that person, that relationship, is daunting because of its complexity. My mind skids around like a dachshund on ice as I ponder where to begin.

Writing Makes Thinking Visible

A flash of light darted past me and lit on a leaf. Following its path, I saw a dragonfly, bright, shiny, and luminous as a brand new car!

Dragonflies take my breath away. I moved cautiously toward the leaf for a closer look. As soon as I drew near, it flitted off, darting across the clearing. Time stood still as that dragonfly flitted through the woods, teasing me with a game of “Catch Me if You Can.” It refused to show off its ephemeral beauty for more than brief seconds.

Finally it tired and posed for a picture, allowing me to capture it with my handy pocket Panasonic. I must confess that like many life stories, my picture was adequate for my purposes, but not publication-worthy. This picture, taken by Sean Morgan, turned out  far better.

Only after I downloaded my photo onto my computer was I able to study the dragonfly in detail. The picture stays still, and it sticks around as long as I want to peer and ponder it. It fits nicely with my growing collection of bug pictures, including ladybugs, grasshoppers, butterflies and some gorgeous spiders. (Yes, I know. I have certifiably weird fascinations.)

Beyond the Finger Pointing

“It was all your fault.”

“Yeah, right, you were such an angel!”

“Both of you always ganged up on me!”

“Well, you were always asking for it.”

“Mom always …“

“Dad never …”

Stressful conversations like this are common in many families, and even more families would have them if it weren’t for all the elephants in the room. Despite — or perhaps because o­f — their obvious potential for escalating stress, these conversations offer rich opportunities for reaping healthful benefits from expressive writing.

Harness the Power of Questions

Questions have paved the path to wisdom, enlightenment, and solutions in cultures throughout history. You may recall that the Socratic Method was based on the use of questions between tutor and pupil. Jesus often posed questions to his followers. Zen roshis challenge disciples with koans (enigmatic riddles like what is the sound of one hand clapping?).

Fortunately you don’t need a time travel machine or a guru to tap into the transformative power of questions. Every person on earth is born naturally curious, and mining the depths of our own curiosity can lead to a wealth of wisdom. Journaling and freewriting are powerful ways to harness that power for any purpose you wish, whether that's solving a perplexing problem, finding your way through the maze of life, or untangling your thoughts as you write a memoir.

As you write, you may often find yourself wondering some version of, “Why does this keep happening?” or “What’s really going on?” or “How else could I go about this?” Listen to that small inner voice, and write down the question, then without further thought, start writing the answer. For example, you might ask yourself the question, “Why am I so stuck?” You might be startled to watch an intuitively obvious answer emerge from your pen or fingers: “Because I don’t really want to be doing this in the first place. I’m only doing it because Grunterman will have a fit if I don’t and . . . .”

Writer's Hell: Myth #1

Anyone who reads self-help books and articles for writers has come across instructions for freewriting, writing practice, journaling or any of several other topics that urge you to simply start writing and keep that hand moving. If you run out of things to say, doodle, repeat a word or phrase, do whatever it takes to keep that hand moving because … what? You’ll go to the proverbial Writer’s Hell where you sit and stare at a blank page for all of Eternity if you don’t? Or maybe the motor in your brain is driven by the inertia of your hand and you’ll stare at a perpetually blank screen?

The advice to keep your hand moving is good advice if you suffer from serious writer’s block, and it can unclog fascinating ideas that may otherwise never emerge. But here’s some great news: You will NOT be sentenced to Writer’s Hell for failing to keep your fingers moving. In fact, it’s often quite a healthy option to lapse into a motionless trance during a writing session. Especially when that writing takes the form of journaling.

My Inner Critic Questions Writing for Health

Despite their reputations as stone walls for writers, inner critics are not inherently evil and don’t deserve a death sentence. When we learn how to listen to them, they can give us valuable guidance. As I sat with my journal, recording thoughts about this blog, the book on this topic I’m refining, and the whole subject of writing for the health of it, I was assailed by burning questions: “Why am I doing this? Why am I working so hard? What on earth difference does it really make?”

Even though these questions were phrased in first person, I recognized the voice of my Inner Critic, aka Gretchen. My first thought as I heard these questions was dismay. Why would these questions plague me? I strongly believe in what I’m doing and the importance of this message. Why would doubts arise? Then I recognized another aspect of the questions. These are questions readers will have, a form of “What’s In This for Me?” I partly answered this question in the first post I wrote, “Four Benefits of Expressive Writing.” But that’s just one angle.

Writing into the Fireplace

My thoughts swirled like a kaleidoscope on a blender motor. My tummy felt queasy, and my shoulders were massive knots of pain. This familiar condition struck me often over the course of the two years I spent in classes working on my masters degree in counseling. My inner mean girl, scaredy-cat and cheerleader got into brawling melees on a regular basis.

Desperate to still those swirling thoughts, I intuitively turned to writing — a strategy that had helped me through many teenage crises a dozen years earlier. I sat with a huge pad of paper and wrote, without any attempt to structure what flowed out of my fingers. I asked questions, whined, and groaned. I flamed idiots, blamed aggressors, and defended myself against real and imagined detractors. I licked wounds and reveled in self-pity.

Four Benefits of Expressive Writing

Any experienced journal keeper will tell you that writing makes life better. Now we know that it can also make you healthier. Here are four expressive writing outcomes that serve to reduce stress and produce other life-enhancing benefits.

A calmer mind. We’ve all had times when the same chain of thoughts runs through our head, distracting us from business at hand and more productive considerations. Zen practitioners often refer to this condition as “monkey mind.” The thoughts run on, and on, looping endlessly without much change, causing stress, unhappiness and other ill effects. One of the classic cures for monkey mind is meditation. That could take decades of practice. A simple alternative is to write down the emotions associated with the looping thoughts and images. The combination of labeling and writing will activate the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain associated with voluntary control.

Defuse strong emotions. Many people find great relief in writing when feelings of rage, fear, grief, or confusion threaten to overwhelm them. Conscious awareness of feelings and emotions defuses much of the obsessive thinking and allows the opportunity to make deliberate decisions about how to interpret them and respond.