Writing Ideas

Writing and Healing Idea #24: Deciding Who to Bring on the Train

Posted by Diane Morrow on February 22, 2007 in Writing Ideas

A patient helped me discover this writing idea. She uses imagery to help manage chronic pain. And one of the images she’s found helpful recently is to imagine that she’s falling asleep on a train and as she’s falling asleep she can hear the sound of the wheels on the tracks and the sound is very soothing and she’s lying very still—on a clean soft pillow—clean sheets–and she can look outside the window at the landscape if she wants—or not—and all the time she’s being carried to a place where the pain is becoming less and less and less. One of the things she’s discovered as this train imagery has developed is that she can decide who to bring on the train. She can decide who to have outside her compartment, riding on the train with her—and she can decide who to invite inside her compartment—and when. She can decide who she’d like to have for company. She can decide who she might want to have available if something should happen—say if the pain becomes worse. She can bring along a dozen people—or one—or none. But in any case she gets to decide, in this imagery, who to bring on the train. And it occurred to me that this image could be translated as an idea for writing. Say that you are beginning to write. Say that you have decided to do a year of writing and healing—or a month of writing and healing—or fifteen minutes of writing and healing. Say that you imagine that as you begin this writing—this writing project—say that you are boarding a train. And say then that you get to decide who will be riding this train with you. And say that it can be anyone at all—persons living or dead—persons real or imagined—some persons perhaps that you’ve only read about in books or some persons perhaps that you’ve conjured in your imagination. Who would you like to bring on the...

Writing and Healing Idea #23: What If the Moon’s a Balloon?

Posted by Diane Morrow on February 13, 2007 in Healing Poetry, Writing Ideas

There’s a poem by e.e.cummings—“who knows if the moon’s a balloon” It begins like this: who knows if the moon’s a balloon, coming out of a keen city in the sky– The poem can serve as a kind of springboard for making a list of questions that begin by asking: WHAT IF? For instance—— What if the moon’s a balloon? What if the balloon pops? What if the moon is a hot-air balloon and the Wizard of Oz gets into the balloon and floats away, and all of this before you can get into the balloon with him, and you have to find your way back home on your own? What if. . . what? Consider making your own list of questions. Write as fast as you can without thinking. Begin with a single question—with e.e. cumming’s question if you like—and then just keep going. Don’t worry about the questions making sense—or the questions being clever—or even interesting. Just write them. Try to write fast without thinking too much. When you have come to the end of something—a pause—look back over the questions you’ve written. Circle the ones that you like–or that surprise you in some way. Save the questions—especially the circled ones. Who knows? One of them could become the beginning to a poem—or to some other whole new...

Writing and Healing Idea #22: Once Upon a Time

Posted by Diane Morrow on January 25, 2007 in Writing Ideas

There are perhaps a million ways to enter or re-enter the writing of fiction. Here is one: Begin with “Once upon a time.” This particular idea springs from one in Dee Metzger’s 1992 book, Writing for Your Life. The book contains a wide range of exercises. One of my favorite of these is an exercise entitled “Entering the Tale”. In this exercise, one is instructed to simply choose a fairy tale—any one at all—and then shift the point of view so that one is writing it in the first person from the protagonist’s point of view. You write from the main character’s point of view as if the story is happening to you right now. For instance, if you were to choose to write—or rewrite—the tale of Cinderella, you might begin: Once upon a time, when I was a girl, and after my mother had died, my father decided to marry a woman who was not only cruel but who had two cruel daughters. . . Or, you could write in the present tense, in a more immediate style: My father has decided to marry again. I am devastated. . . You have a number of options here. You can include as many of the original details of the story as you like. You can also alter the details as needed. The fairy tale is at the core of your story—it’s the seed of your story—but you can take this seed, and shift perspective, and carry it wherever you like. Simply begin at the beginning—Once upon a...

Writing and Healing Idea #21: Meanwhile

Posted by Diane Morrow on January 16, 2007 in Writing Ideas

What I like best about Mary Oliver’s poem, “The Wild Geese,” is the way it manages to hold two such vastly different things in such an apparently simple poem. Despair and the wild geese heading home. Not just one or the other. Both. She manages the juxtaposition of these two things—the leap from the one to the other—with that single word: meanwhile. And, in so doing, the poem itself becomes a kind of invitation. First a literal invitation: “Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.” And, then, an invitation to consider what else might be happening meanwhile. So, the writing idea—- Write for ten or fifteen minutes about a moment of despair—it can be your own despair, or someone else’s, or it can be a fictional moment—a character, perhaps, experiencing a moment of despair. And then—stop—and skip down a line or two and write about some of the things that might be happening meanwhile—- You can read more about “The Wild Geese” here....

Writing and Healing Idea #20: Finding a Benefit in Adversity

Posted by Diane Morrow on January 11, 2007 in Writing Ideas

For this writing idea I’m going to set down, first, the instructions that Annette Stanton and Sharon Danoff-Burg used in the study that I wrote about earlier this week. These instructions are specifically written for a woman with breast cancer. Following these instructions, I’m including a slight revision, a set of instructions that might be applied in the wake of any adversity. An adversity I’m going to call X. What is your X? An illness? A loss? A setback? X can be whatever you would like for X to be. And you can, if you like, choose the first X that comes to mind. You really can’t do this wrong. (And of course if it’s too soon to find a benefit in X feel free to skip this writing exercise—to save it for next year—or for your next life for that matter. If you would prefer to deal with the part of X that hasn’t been so beneficial you may want to look at Writing and Healing Idea #12 or Writing and Healing Idea #14) 1. The Stanton-Danoff-Burg Instructions: Writing About Breast Cancer [from The Writing Cure] What I would like you to write about for these four sessions [of twenty minutes each] are any POSITIVE thoughts and feelings about your experience with breast cancer. I realize that women with breast cancer experience a full range of emotions that often includes some positive emotions, thoughts, and changes, and in this writing exercise I want you to focus only on the positive thoughts and feelings that you have experienced over the course of your cancer. Ideally, I would like you to focus on positive thoughts or feelings that you have not discussed in great detail with others. You might also tie your positive thoughts and feelings about your experiences with cancer to other parts of your life—your childhood, people you love, who you are, or who you want to be. Again, the most important part of your writing is that you really focus on your positive thoughts and feelings. The only rule is that you write continuously for the entire time. If you run out of things to say, just repeat what you have already written. Don’t worry about grammar, spelling or sentence structure. Don’t worry about erasing or crossing things out. Just write. 2. The Stanton-Danoff-Burg Instructions Revised: Writing About X What I would like you to write about for these four sessions [of twenty minutes each] are any POSITIVE thoughts and feelings about your experience with X. I realize that people who have undergone X experience a full range of emotions that often includes some positive emotions, thoughts, and changes, and in this writing exercise I want you to focus only on the positive thoughts and feelings that you have experienced over the course of X. Ideally, I would like you to focus on positive thoughts or feelings that you have not discussed in great detail with others. You might also tie your positive thoughts and feelings about your experiences with X to other parts of your life—your childhood, people you love, who you are, or who you want to be. Again, the most important part of your writing is that you really focus on your positive thoughts and feelings. The only rule is that you write continuously...

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