Why an ebook of One Year of Writing and Healing?
I am delighted to announce that One Year of Writing and Healing is now an ebook! I’ve completed a project which I’ve been intending to complete for a while: an ebook of the book I self-published back in 2016: One Year of Writing and Healing. It’s revised a bit—I couldn’t resist—but it is not fundamentally different from the 2016 book and thus I am not labeling it as a new edition. One way to think about the book is as a kind of extended workshop on writing and healing with the support of research and the good company of poets, along with—of course—a plethora of writing prompts. One could spend a year going through it—or a month—or one could dip in and out of it over a period of years at your leisure. Feedback about the book is welcome. Are there parts that seem useful? Are there topics you’d like to hear more about? You can contact me using the navigation link (in the sidebar or under navigation links): “Contact me.” I’m thinking about writing at this site again—maybe—and I’m staying open to what might be good topics and material for picking up the writing here again. Order the book...
read moreWrite Around Portland
Write Around Portland’s mission is to change lives through the power of writing. Since 1999 they have provided high-quality, participant-centered, creative writing workshops in partnership with hospitals, schools, prisons, social service agencies, treatment centers, low-income housing providers and more. Write Around Portland believes that writing is a powerful tool for individual and societal transformation, self-expression, healing and the realization of the dignity of one’s self and others. They also believe that writing and sharing stories helps us access our common humanity and connects individuals and groups who are often separated by age, race, income level, gender, ethnicity, language, sexual orientation, health status, education level and the geographic and social boundaries of neighborhoods. In any life, especially one lived in poverty or isolation, there is a vital need for art, community and joy. The workshop curriculum focuses on experiential learning, generating new writing and building on the writers’ strengths. Workshop participants write stories, poems, memoirs, letters and essays while experimenting with imagery, character development, dialogue and early-draft revision. Every week participants write, share and provide positive feedback to grow as writers and build respectful community. Workshops are facilitated by trained volunteers who write and share alongside participants. As a non-profit organization, Write Around Portland relies on individual donors, grants and foundations to support their work. For more information, please visit their website at...
read moreInstructions by Neil Gaiman
I’ve for a long time been interested in poems and excerpts that can invite writing and I’ve recently come across this poem by Neil Gaiman that seems especially well suited for this. The poem is a set of instructions for “what to do if you find yourself inside a fairy tale.” It begins: Touch the wooden gate in the wall you never saw before. Say “please” before you open the latch, go through, walk down the path. I like the way the poem begins with such direct instructions—we’re in this new place—and already guided in how to interact with it. Gestures in fairy tales that will lead to good things: saying please; going through the gate; moving forward. He continues: Walk through the house. Take nothing. Eat nothing. However, if any creature tells you that it hungers, feed it. If it tells you that it is dirty, clean it. If it cries to you that it hurts, if you can, ease its pain. Yes. This is the way it is in fairy tales. This is what will work. The adventure goes on for many stanzas: A glimpse of Winter’s realm Permission to turn back An old woman beneath a twisted oak A river—and a ferryman. (“The answer to his question is this: If he hands the oar to his passenger, he will be free to leave the boat. Only tell him this from a safe distance.”) More happens: An encounter with giants, witches, dragons. An encounter with a sister The way back A wise eagle A silver fish A gray wolf Arriving home The poem is lovely in itself—and potentially wise. It also seems like the kind of poem that could open itself to become a kind of interactive poem—and I’ve been playing with this idea. I’m also playing with the idea of embedding forms into the site as a way to lower barriers to writing. The way I’ve set this up is simply to link writing prompts to forms with the notion that any writing done on the form will not be used in any way for sharing or publication. Please note that it will also not be linked in any way to one’s email address or identifying information. In the landmark study done by James Pennebaker, college students wrote for twenty minutes at a time, anonymously, and were given no feedback on their writing—it simply went into a vault for research. And still, it was of benefit. The act of writing was beneficial. That’s my intention in linking these writing prompts to forms—to lower a barrier to writing—and create a safe space for writing which could be of benefit. You, of course, are also free to use the writing prompts without writing in the forms. As I often say to my students in the morning when I provide a catalyst for writing, please use as you wish. The writing prompts and forms based on Neil Gaiman’s “Instructions” are here. See also: The full text of Neil Gaiman’s “Instructions.” Neil Gaiman reading “Instructions” An article on the Pennebaker study from this site. An article on the potential benefits of fiction writing from this site. A writing prompt on “entering the tale” from this site. The image is from Neil Gaiman’s picture book, “Instructions,” illustrated by Charles Vess...
read moreWriting and Healing Prompt: Count Key Words
After writing last week some early thoughts about happiness, I decided to go back and see if I tend to use the word happiness much—and discovered I don’t! On this site—before last week (when I used it twenty or so times)—I’ve not used the word once, and in the entire draft of my book I’ve only used it seven times. I was interested to see then what words I do use and found, for instance, compassion was much more common: 50 times. Suffering: 42 times. Peace: 37. James Pennebaker has a program that counts words and looks for patterns—and has yielded interesting results. But one can also count particular words in a Word document by simply using the find feature. It occurs to me that the pattern of words we use can be a clue to what preoccupies us. So . . . the prompt: count key words. And you can decide what those key words might be. You can begin by looking through a few pages of your own writing and looking for patterns—what words stand out? Or you can begin by generating a list of possible candidate words and then do searches of them in your own writing. Or you can start with these four words: happiness, peace, suffering, and compassion. You can also use Wordle to get a snapshot of key words in a piece of text or a blog. I entered my own blog and got this word picture: (The word happiness jumped in frequency after last week’s post.) ____________________________________________________ Also: at analyzewords.com you can analyze Twitter feeds using James Pennebaker’s program: Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC). The site includes a link explaining the analytic program and leads to links for additional resources on his analysis. His program focuses on the use of pronouns, articles, prepositions, and other small words. He’s become interested, through his research, in these smaller, connecting words rather than key...
read moreThe Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
This is a poem for the middle of the night. Here are the first six lines: When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things His words make me want to respond in kind. To echo and borrow his rhythms: When despair for my life and the life of those whom I love grows in me and when I wake in the night and the fear is there like an old visitor, I go out to the kitchen and I make, again, a mug of hot cocoa, and I remember, if only for a moment, the breezeway in my grandmother’s house, the coolness against my bare feet, the way it led out to the patio and the small table there, the fence around the yard, and the flowers against the fence, hollyhocks and four o’clocks and lilac. I feel how that place is still present because I can remember it and with that I come into the peace of my grandmother’s garden. See also: The poem at...
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