Writing Ideas

Writing and Healing Idea #39: Changing the Plot

Posted by Diane Morrow on June 5, 2007 in Writing Ideas

This idea springs out of the previous post and from E.M. Forster’s distinction between story and plot. Story: The king dies and then the queen dies. Plot: The king dies, and then the queen dies of grief. You can begin by choosing five moments—from your life—from someone else’s life—or you can make them up. Or you can, if you like, write about the king and the queen. Draw the moments as plot points on a piece of paper. For instance: • THE KING DIES. • THE QUEEN DIES. Then, begin to play with connecting the points—and reconnecting them—in new ways. Write about the connections. Write different plots. Different ways that the dots get connected. If possible, make the plot mildly ludicrous, improbable—this itself a way of stretching the mind to imagine new possibilities. Write new points. Here, for instance, is one way—an alternative way—of connecting the two plot points about the king and the queen. • The king dies. • The queen dies, under mysterious circumstances. • The prince, their son, wants to believe his mother died of grief. (It’s so much harder to accept, sometimes, that death—it just happens—accidents and illness—mysteries—-) • The queen returns in her next life as a fish. • The prince meets this fish one day when he’s out on a boat and she jumps up out of the water next to his boat. • The fish speaks. • And she tells him—– What? What does she tell...

Writing and Healing Idea #38: I’ve Always Meant to Tell You: A Different Kind of Mother’s Day Greeting

Posted by Diane Morrow on May 13, 2007 in Writing Ideas

The inspiration for this writing idea comes from an anthology of letters edited by Constance Warloe, entitled From Daughters to Mothers: I’ve Always Meant to Tell You. In the introduction to the letters, Ms. Warloe writes that the initial idea for the anthology came from her literary agent but that she soon found herself “hooked”. She writes: I thought immediately of the disappointing sentiments expressed in Mother’s Day cards. So often the verses begin, I know I don’t tell you very often . . . and then go on to express less than we want to say, not as well as we want to say it, but we buy the cards anyway. We find the cards stored in drawers and boxes at our mothers’ homes, and, as we have our own children, our own collections begin to accumulate. Maybe this book could be a different Mother’s Day greeting, I thought. Maybe this book could get things said that usually remain unspoken. This then is at the heart of this writing idea—to get something said that usually remains unspoken. To write it in the form of a letter—imagining that one will be sending it—and imagining that it will be read—but knowing at the same time that one may no longer be able to send it—or that one may choose not to send it— Please note that this kind of letter may not be an easy one to write—and that it may take some time—time to be ready to write it—and time, once ready, to do the actual writing. Many of the writers who contributed to Ms. Warloe’s anthology are accomplished and professional writers. And many still found the task difficult. Whether women wrote about “the lowest sorrow or the highest joy,” Ms. Warloe tells how many of the letters for the anthology came to her along with handwritten notes: “This was so much harder than I thought it would be.” She writes, for instance, of Natalie Goldberg’s contribution: Natalie Goldberg, the most famous of writing coaches, called me one afternoon to say she could not write the letter and would have to withdraw from the anthology. I said if it wasn’t meant to be, it wasn’t meant to be, and accepted her withdrawal. She called three hours later and said she had written the letter, she just needed to know she didn’t have to! So—a reminder then—you don’t have to write the letter—of course—but if you want to write the letter you can go ahead—and begin—just one line at first—I always meant to tell...

Writing and Healing Idea #37: A Conversation with a Companion

Posted by Diane Morrow on May 10, 2007 in Healing Conversation, Writing Ideas

Imagine that you receive an invitation: You and a companion of your choosing are invited to spend a day together—in a place of your choosing. Because this is an imagined invitation the sky is the limit. You may choose any companion. A person living or dead. A person whom you know well or a person you’ve never had an opportunity to meet but have always wished that you could. A poet? A musician? Martin Luther King? For that matter, you may choose to bring a character who exists only in the world of the imagination. The old woman in the cottage? Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings? Dumbledore? You may choose any companion at all. You may choose any place. You may choose any activity, or any series of activities. And then at some point during the day, allow it to happen that the two of you engage in a conversation—the kind of conversation you have always longed to have, and realize that you now can have with this companion. Close your eyes. Listen closely. You and your companion are beginning a conversation. Perhaps your companion speaks first. Or perhaps you speak first and then your companion speaks. What is it that your companion says? And how do you respond? And then what happens next? You can, if you like, write the conversation down— This is also the kind of conversation that you can come back to again. You can come back to it on different days. This can become, if you like, a series of conversations over...

Writing and Healing Idea #36: A Letter for Breaking Through Resistance

Posted by Diane Morrow on April 30, 2007 in Writing Ideas

If you want to write and you can’t write, and when all else has failed, you can always write a letter—a letter perhaps something like this: To Whom it May Concern: I have not written a word in six weeks. Please send any advice or encouragement that you can muster. Sincerely———- And then, if you like, you can write yourself a letter back. And you can, if you like, go ahead and mail that second letter to yourself–for encouragement.

Writing and Healing Idea #35: My Favorite Piece of Writing Advice from Natalie Goldberg

Posted by Diane Morrow on in Writing Ideas

In her book, Writing Down the Bones (published in 1986), Natalie Goldberg includes a wonderfully direct piece about how hard it is to get the conditions just right for work to flow. What she says here is true of writing, and it can be true of healing, and it can be true, I suppose, of any serious work. And sometimes, she suggests, the antidote may simply be to acknowledge this—that the conditions are not perfect, never perfect, that the world is filled with competing demands and distractions. So—-her advice: Okay. Your kids are climbing into the cereal box. You have $1.25 left in your checking account. Your husband can’t find his shoes, your car won’t start, you know you have lived a life of unfulfilled dreams. There is the threat of a nuclear holocaust, there is apartheid in South Africa, it is twenty degrees below zero outside, your nose itches, and you don’t have even three plates that match to serve dinner on. Your feet are swollen, you need to make a dentist appointment, the dog needs to be let out, you have to defrost the chicken and make a phone call to your cousin in Boston, you’re worried about your mother’s glaucoma, you forgot to put film in the camera, Safeway has a sale on solid white tuna, you are waiting for a job offer, you just bought a computer and you have to unpack it. You have to start eating sprouts and stop eating doughnuts, you lost your favorite pen, and the cat peed on your current notebook. Take out another notebook, pick up another pen, and just write, just write, just write. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write. Say yes, stay alive, be awake. Just write. Just write. Just write. There it is. Just write. For ten minutes or fifteen minutes or twenty minutes. About anything at all. About, if you like, the dog that needs to be let out, that solid white tuna on sale, your mother’s glaucoma. . . In the teeth of resistance, take one definitive step. Just...

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