Healing Conversation

Fishing: An Image for Writing and Healing

Posted by Diane Morrow on May 31, 2007 in Healing Conversation, Healing Images

The following passage, from Peter Elbow’s Writing Without Teachers, resonates nicely with the image that Michelle Huneven uses for conversation in her novel, Jamesland. There she writes about conversation as an unwinding ball of string. Here, the string is cast out onto the water: Elbow writes [p. 77]: Writing is a string you send out to connect yourself with other consciousnesses, but usually you never have the opportunity to feel anything at the other end. How can you tell whether you’ve got a fish if the line is always slack? The teacherless writing class tries to remedy this situation. It tries to take you out of darkness and silence. It is a class of seven to twelve people. It meets at least once a week. Everyone reads everyone else’s writing. Everyone tries to give each writer a sense of how his words were experienced. The goal is for the writer to come as close as possible to being able to see and experience his own words through seven or more people. That’s all. To improve your writing you don’t need advice about what changes to make; you don’t need theories of what is good and bad writing. You need movies of people’s minds while they read your words. This is, I think, a terribly interesting notion—that what we may really want—at least some of the time—when we put words out there—is not evaluation—or approval—or even agreement—but this something else—this other thing–—this kind of movie of someone else’s mind—a movie of another consciousness receiving the words. Would this be the fish then? The fish caught? And this as one way out of darkness and silence? And, at the same time, a way to make writing clearer and stronger and more meaningful? Well, I’m all for...

How to Find a Good Writing Group

Posted by Diane Morrow on May 29, 2007 in Healing Conversation, Recommended Books

First—-a good writing group is hard to find. Even a good group of two. It is harder to find than a good grocery store, or a good bakery, and probably harder than finding a good yoga class. Finding a good writing group is probably more on a par with finding a great job—or the right house. Now and then a fabulous house or job lands in your lap. But more often this is the kind of thing you have to prepare for, and search for, and be willing to invest some time in. How to prepare? A few words of advice (to be used as you wish): If and when you feel like a writing group is something you’d like to explore, and, assuming the fabulous writing group or workshop has not already landed in your lap, I’d recommend reading Peter Elbow’s Writing without Teachers and/or Pat Schneider’s Writing Alone and with Others. The two books complement each other well. Elbow’s book is the older of the two. It was first published in 1973 and is a classic in the field of teaching writing. Two chapters—“The Teacherless Writing Class,” and “Thoughts on the Teacherless Writing Class”—are good preparation for both recognizing a good writing group when you come across one, or, perhaps, starting a new one of your own. Elbow’s emphasis is on the importance of getting honest authentic feedback from readers—and how this process of feedback can grow one’s writing. Schneider’s book, published in 2003, is the newer book. It’s a longer book than Elbow’s, chattier, with more stories and examples drawn from her classes. One of its particular strengths is in its advice on how to recognize and help create a healthy workshop. And Ms. Schneider offers this advice [p. 199] on recognizing a good writing class: After being with your teacher, do you feel more like writing or less like writing? You should never be made to feel embarrassment or shame in the classroom. If that happens, there is something wrong with the way writing is being taught. Drop the class. Take auto mechanics or geometry! Then write about fixing cars, or about the perfect problem. It’s the right question I think: After being with your teacher do you feel more like writing or less like writing? It’s the kind of question one could ask about a writing teacher or a writing class or a writing group or perhaps anything that one seeks out in order to foster one’s writing. After being with __________, do you feel more like writing or less like...

One (More) Reason I Like Writing Groups and Writing Workshops

Posted by Diane Morrow on May 27, 2007 in Healing Conversation

Because, sometimes, the written word is heard—and respected—in a different way than ordinary spoken language. I saw this regularly at the shelters when I taught writing workshops there. The men and women would come into the room for a workshop, sometimes pushing, teasing each other, heckling, some of it good-natured, some less so, and then everyone would find a place around the table. We’d talk a bit. Then I’d write an idea up on the board—a word or a phrase to spark the writing. The writing would begin. The room would quiet. And after those first several minutes of writing, when people were talking about the writing, or reading their writing aloud, there would be this different quality of attention in the room. A woman would read a poem. A man would read a paragraph. “That was all right,” someone would say. “I hear you,” someone would say. The written word, and the sharing of the written word, was almost universally respected in that room. I never had to give instruction in this, or remind people of this. It just happened. And when people knew that their words were going to be respected, then sometimes—not all the time—but sometimes—it was as if a new context had been created—and, into this new context, something new—some new piece of conversation—–could...

Harry Potter and Lupin: A Healing Conversation [Part Two]

Posted by Diane Morrow on May 24, 2007 in Healing Conversation

(This is a continuation of Harry Potter and Lupin [Part One]) It’s Lupin, a new teacher at Hogwarts that year, who asks Harry Potter to stay after class for a word. And it’s with Lupin that Harry Potter finds it possible to broach the question he’s been longing to ask. ‘Why? Why do they affect me like that? Am I just —-?’ ‘It has nothing to do with weakness,’ said Professor Lupin sharply, as though he had read Harry’s mind. ‘The dementors affect you worse than the others because there are horrors in your past that the others don’t have.’ A ray of wintry sunlight fell across the classroom, illuminating Lupin’s gray hairs and the lines on his young face. ‘Dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them. Even Muggles feel their presence, though they can’t see them. Get too near a dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself. . . soul-less and evil. You’ll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life. And the worst that happened to you, Harry, is enough to make anyone fall off their broom. You have nothing to feel ashamed of.’ Harry Potter, as you may well know, was present at the murder of his parents when he was just an infant. The trauma of the murder has left him vulnerable. It’s his point of weakness, his Achilles heel. And what Professor Lupin does, as perhaps some of the best teachers have always done, is to explain Harry to himself, provide him with a context which can allow him to make sense of his experience and which no longer requires him to feel shame. That, it seems to me, is one of the things that a healing conversation can do: offer the kind of context that can help someone to see themselves—and their situation—more clearly. And, in doing so, be relieved, perhaps, of a misplaced burden of shame. And this, I have no doubt, can be...

Something Different: A Conversation Between Harry Potter and Lupin [Part One]

Posted by Diane Morrow on May 22, 2007 in Healing Conversation

Say that it happens like this. You are thirteen years old. Summer has ended. The school year is set to begin. You arrive at King’s Cross Station in London, and, upon arrival, make your way, with your traveling companions, to a solid barrier that stands between platforms nine and ten. Because you have been this way before, you know that what you must do next is lean against this barrier until you find yourself falling through—and landing—at platform nine and three-quarters. The train is waiting. You gather your luggage and board, moving with your companions down the corridor until you locate an empty compartment. You settle in. The train begins to move, heading back toward school, toward Hogwarts, a place which you love and are most anxious to return to. You feel the most pleasant sense of anticipation—for the train ride itself, this time together with your friends, the beginning of whole new school year. The train continues on its way, through the mountains now, then forests, the countryside growing ever wilder and darker as you make your way toward Hogwarts. All of this is as expected. It’s familiar, reassuring even. But then, in the middle of the afternoon, it begins to rain. The rain thickens. The windows turn a solid gray, then gradually become darker. One person lights a lantern and then another does, so that lanterns are lit up and down the train. Perhaps you feel the faintest sense of foreboding. In the next moment the train stops—suddenly, so that suitcases spill from the racks. The lights go out. You’re still trying to get your bearings in the darkness when the door to your compartment opens. A figure appears—a cloaked silhouette—with a hand extending toward you—gray and slimy and scabbed. You hear a rattle—its breath. A deep chill spreads throughout the compartment. Later, one of your companions will describe a feeling in this moment, utterly strange, like he’d never be cheerful again. But for you, the feeling is more acute, more intense, and more intensely painful, the cold seeping beneath your skin and down through layers of muscle and bone into your very heart. You hear, as if from a distance, a terrible screaming and pleading, and then. . . nothing. When you regain consciousness, you gradually become aware of your surroundings. You also become aware that none of the others in your compartment have fainted, nor have they heard the screaming. As the train begins to regain speed and move towards Hogwarts, you may carry the nagging suspicion that something is wrong with you, something terribly different, some weakness that the others do not share. What you may feel is shame. And it may happen that you want to talk to someone about this feeling but at the same time you’re not sure who to talk to or how to begin the conversation. But then one day it may happen that an opening appears. Perhaps a teacher asks you to stay after class for a word. And perhaps you sense a kindness in this teacher—a sense that this teacher knows something. And perhaps, well, you take the leap, find a way to ask the question that you have been longing to ask. [To be continued.] [And please note that the scenes for this post are drawn...

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