What matters in life isn't material goods. Fame and fortune are hollow. What really matters, at the end of the day, is happiness. For some reason, America believes happiness is something we should maybe want, but not try to get, or not talk about. Often confused with money, power, or physical pleasures, happiness is something everybody wants and few people attain.
Bookshelves are heavy with quick turn around advice: "7 Steps to a Better You!"
No such plan works. I hate to sound cold, but this is true. Whatever the merits, nothing can change a life the way slow, steady mindfulness can. At the risk of being trite, hope and compassion are powerful tools. And, of course, the only person who can transform your life -- who can take the first steps on the road to recovery -- is you.
At the same time, healing through writing can become confused by those who use it as a tool. Prompts for therapeutic writing are often stilted and formal, advising writers to "Write what you know," "write from experience," and "write what you're feeling."
These are fine ideas; of course this is important! What you know, Reader, and what you feel, too. But the prompts miss the important point that, if you are overcoming adversity, what you know and what you feel will emerge organically from your writing.
There's no reason to force the subject. In time, issues will surface. They may be dealt with then. First, writing. Second, healing.
For those who follow this blog, I would like to suggest -- if you want to write about what you know, your memoir, your story -- that you check back, once a week, on Sundays. New prompts and suggestions will be made for writers. Tips and tricks, too.
If you're thinking about using the tool of writing as a path to healing, then I will say congratulations, and I will leave you with 5 writing prompts from John Gardner's The Art of Fiction. Remember, even though the book is the art of fiction, the same rules apply to fiction and to memoir, or non-fiction. True stories are governed by the same rules.
Bookshelves are heavy with quick turn around advice: "7 Steps to a Better You!"
No such plan works. I hate to sound cold, but this is true. Whatever the merits, nothing can change a life the way slow, steady mindfulness can. At the risk of being trite, hope and compassion are powerful tools. And, of course, the only person who can transform your life -- who can take the first steps on the road to recovery -- is you.
At the same time, healing through writing can become confused by those who use it as a tool. Prompts for therapeutic writing are often stilted and formal, advising writers to "Write what you know," "write from experience," and "write what you're feeling."
These are fine ideas; of course this is important! What you know, Reader, and what you feel, too. But the prompts miss the important point that, if you are overcoming adversity, what you know and what you feel will emerge organically from your writing.
There's no reason to force the subject. In time, issues will surface. They may be dealt with then. First, writing. Second, healing.
For those who follow this blog, I would like to suggest -- if you want to write about what you know, your memoir, your story -- that you check back, once a week, on Sundays. New prompts and suggestions will be made for writers. Tips and tricks, too.
If you're thinking about using the tool of writing as a path to healing, then I will say congratulations, and I will leave you with 5 writing prompts from John Gardner's The Art of Fiction. Remember, even though the book is the art of fiction, the same rules apply to fiction and to memoir, or non-fiction. True stories are governed by the same rules.
- Take a simple event: A man gets off a bus, trips, looks around, in embarrassment, and sees a woman smiling. Describe this event, using the same characters and elements of setting, in five completely different ways (changes of style, tone, sentence structure, voice, psychic distance, etc.). You might try the story writing as Stephen King, William Shakespeare, or something similar. Make sure the styles are radically different. Otherwise, the exercise is wasted.
- Write three effective long sentences, grammatically correct, each one at least a full typed page (250 words), and each involving a different emotion (anger, pensiveness, sorrow, hate, love, etc.). Purpose: control of tone in a complex sentence.
- Describe a building as seen by a man whose son has just been killed in a war. Do not mention the son, war, death, or the old man doing the seeing; also do not mention darkness, rot, or other trite images. Then describe the same building, in the same weather and at the same time of day, as seen by a happy lover. Do not mention love, the loved one, the person doing the seeing, etc., just as before.
- Describe and evoke a simple action (for example, sharpening a pencil, carving a tombstone, shooting a rat).
- Write an honest and sensitive description (or sketch) of (a) one of your parents, (b) a mythological beast, and (c) a ghost.
