If you're feeling stuck, here's a gentle process that might help.
Some of my earliest memories of writing are the tiny books that I loved to make as a child, by folding or stitching pieces of paper and filling them with my stories. This was writing I wanted to share. I wanted to watch people thumb through my little books.
But there was other writing too, private writing that I kept in a white leatherette diary with a silver lock and key, and a loop on the side into which a special silver pencil slid. The diary was a Christmas gift and I cherished it. I loved the idea of locking my writing away. I can’t remember what I wrote in it and now the diary has been lost to time, but I’m glad that I had this secret space in which to write.
Over the years, I’ve worked with so many people who feel anxious about writing because their private writing space was violated in some way when they were young. Perhaps someone – a sibling or a parent – found their diary and read it and shamed them about it. Perhaps they remember being made to read their writing out loud in class and they can still feel the pain of that in their bodies.
Most of us carry some kind of story with us about writing and trust, writing and shame, writing and being read, writing and being told that we are somehow wrong or not good enough or silly or embarrassing.
Sometimes we don’t even consciously remember these stories. They’re lodged deep down, in a tender place inside us.
And then there are also good stories of writing, helpful stories. Perhaps there’s a memory you have of reading a poem or a page that landed so powerfully in your body that you can still remember where you were at that very moment when you first encountered it.
I remember, for example, taking my Mum’s anthology of poetry from the bookshelf in the living room and turning to Gerard Manley Hopkins’ The Windhover:
I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
I had no idea what the poem was about but I remember how the sensation of those words caught me up and wouldn’t let me go, how I had to read that poem, over and over, until I had it by heart, and how I whispered it to myself like a spell, as I walked to school. I remember how I tried to write my own poem, imitating the sounds and rhythms, the long, unspooling skeins of hyphenated alliterations, the ecstatic repetitions, the line breaks.
Writing Experiment
Today I invite you to gently go inside yourself and check out what stories of writing you’re carrying with you.
Are there stories that make you feel good, that remind you of why you love writing, how you first fell in love with words? Maybe there are people in your life who helped to spark your interest, who encouraged you, who saw you in your writing.
Savour the good stories. These are often the stories that hold the seeds of your writing practice, places you can return to when you need to remember why you do what you do and why it’s important to you. Let these stories become your resources.
If there are any unhelpul or painful stories, any stories that you’ve been carrying for a long time and that are getting in the way of you writing freely and easily, gently acknowledge these, with great kindness towards yourself.
You could visualise sending love to any hurt or vulnerable parts of you, or giving them a stroke, as if you were stroking a small, frightened creature – perhaps a cat or a bird or whatever shape you imagine this part of you to be.
if you feel ready to let them go, you could even write them out and rip them up, or burn them, or throw them away.
If you feel able, write about some of your memories of writing.
All these writing-stories are part of what makes you you, and makes your writing what it is – your writing. Writing that is alive with your aliveness.
You deserve to have a space for yourself to write what you need to write. If you're interested in exploring more writing invitations like this one, I would love to welcome you to WRITE! Club.
