Writing Ideas

Writing and Healing Idea #43: Imagining the Future

Posted by Diane Morrow on July 1, 2007 in Writing Ideas

Imagine for a moment that you’ve been handed a ticket. And imagine that this ticket grants you admittance aboard a vehicle which can then carry you to any point in your future that you desire. Six months from now? One year? Five years? The vehicle is navigated by a kind and skilled conductor. You simply need to tell him to which period of time you would like to travel. Then close your eyes. And let yourself begin to go there. Imagine that upon your arrival at this moment in the future, you discover that everything has gone as well for you as it possibly could. Imagine that things have gone the way that in your deepest heart you have most wished for them to go. Imagine the details. You may find that a particular scene emerges in your mind’s eye. Notice yourself in this scene. What are you doing? Who and/or what is around you? What does a typical day look like? What else do you notice? And what...

Writing a Revision in Ten Steps

Posted by Diane Morrow on June 17, 2007 in Revision, Writing Ideas

I started earlier this month by writing about a couple of early possible steps to revision—gathering a clean copy of your work—-and figuring out what you really want to write. I thought it might be helpful now to offer an overview—a kind of template for revision. This template could work, I suppose, for revising any piece of written work, but I’m thinking of it here, and in particular, for some pages you may have done in the context of writing and healing. You may want to try the steps in the order in which I’ve outlined them. You may want to do a step a day—or a step a week. You may also want to rearrange the steps a bit, revise them. Of course, feel free. So, A Template for Revision—-Ten Steps: 1. Create a clean copy of your work. Put it away. And wait. At least a week. 2. Read something you love. 3. Figure out what you long to write. 4. Gather supplies for revision: the clean, printed copy of your work; a pencil; a few pens in different colors; a pad of paper. 5. Go for a walk. Become, if possible, a stranger in the streets. 6. Become a stranger to your own pages. In order to do this, schedule for yourself at least thirty minutes of quiet, uninterrupted time. Sixty minutes would be even better. Begin to read your pages as if you are a stranger to them—preferably a kind stranger. And, this first time through, read the pages straight through without making any marks. Read for the big picture—the forest rather than the trees. Or, to use a slightly different metaphor, think of this stage like doing landscape design before you begin to fuss with any individual plant. Try, if possible, to resist the urge to edit. If you do find a need to make notes or marks of any sort, make them on a separate sheet of paper. 7. Read for words that resonate. This second time reading through your pages, begin to make boxes around words and lines that resonate with you now for some reason. Use different colors if you like. Draw boxes around words and lines that surprise you—or that hit the right note—or that seem to you now to be of some importance. 8. Write a response to your pages. Take out a clean sheet of paper and write in response to what you’ve just read, responding in particular to those words that are now inside the boxes. Write as if you are that kind stranger–or perhaps a kind teacher. Dear ———, I have just finished reading the pages you gave me, and I find that I am moved (—puzzled—delighted—) by several parts of this . . . . There is one line in particular, out of all of them, that strikes me now . . . . And too, one of the things I began to notice as I read was a certain pattern in what you’re doing. It’s as if . . . 9. Decide on a form that feels right for expressing some or much of what you’ve written. You may find it helpful at this point to go back and look again at step 3: What is it that you long to write? And what...

Writing and Healing Idea #41: Reading to Discover What You Most Want to Write

Posted by Diane Morrow on June 14, 2007 in Writing Ideas

Find a piece of writing that you love—-a poem or a children’s book or a story or a novel—or a something. Look at it again—or look at part of it again—- a page—a passage——beginning to get that sense again of how and why you love it. Write about it. Write about the way it feels in your body to read this piece of writing that you love. Write about how and why this piece of writing touches you. Or you can, if you like, begin a letter to the writer of the piece. In the letter, consider writing to her or him about what touched you in particular about their writing. Consider writing about the piece of writing that you still want to write but haven’t...

Every Craftsman by Rumi

Posted by Diane Morrow on June 12, 2007 in Healing Images, Healing Poetry, Writing Ideas

For the past week or so I’ve been looking for a poem that would speak somehow to revision—and I couldn’t quite find what I was looking for. And then I found this poem by Rumi. It’s not what I thought I was looking for—it does something slightly different. But at the same time it feels like the right next image for revision. For looking again. For looking at the big picture. And what was it again that I wanted to write? What did I hope would come of this? What can I do with the pages I’ve written? What do I hope will come of this? Not infrequently, I find that when people come up against a serious illness or a serious loss–or any kind of significant transition—they may find themselves, eventually, asking certain kinds of questions: And what is it that I’m here for? What is my piece? What is my gift? What do I want to leave behind? Rumi’s poem, Every Craftsman, speaks to these questions. Here are the first 17 lines: I’ve said before that every craftsman searches for what’s not there to practice his craft. A builder looks for the rotten hole where the roof caved in. A water-carrier picks the empty pot. A carpenter stops at the house with no door. Workers rush toward some hint of emptiness, which they then start to fill. Their hope, though, is for emptiness, so don’t think you must avoid it. It contains what you need! Dear soul, if you were not friends with the vast nothing inside, why would you always be casting your net into it, and waiting so patiently? Rumi’s poem is another way of asking: What is the one piece of writing that you, and only you, can write? What emptiness is waiting to be filled? Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish writer, said (among other things) in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: “I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey.” What sort of life is it that you—and only you—can write about? What gap is waiting?...

Writing and Healing Idea #40: A Clean Copy

Posted by Diane Morrow on June 10, 2007 in Writing Ideas

In order to practice revision—looking again—it’s necessary, first, to have something to look at. And a good way, I think, to practice this, is to have something written down—some clean unmarked pages of writing. Thus, I propose, a first step to revision: a clean copy of at least 10 pages of writing. What kinds of pages? Anything. It can be pages from a journal. Pages you wrote in response to a writing idea. It can be a story. It can be pages of freewriting. Anything. Anything you feel like you’d like to look at again. Really. And if you don’t have any pages you want to look at again—–you can create some new pages. You can, if you like, begin by freewriting. If your pages are handwritten pages, it’s probably best to enter them into your computer and print them out. It’s easier, I think, to see words and sentences when they’re typed and have spaces between and around them. The goal is (at least) 10 freshly printed, unmarked pages of your own writing. And then find a folder for the pages and put them away for a while—for a week at...

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