Leave Everything You Learned in School at the Door
/This post is a part of a series; if you want to start at the beginning, read this first.
For a few years I worked for the Arts Council in a program where they'd send poets to high schools to do a 4-hour workshop with the students. I'd always start with sharing with them these strategies for writing before leading several writing exercises.
This particular guideline was my favorite to share with them because it went against everything they were asked to do in their usual classes.
When it comes to writing down your first thoughts, Natalie Goldberg encourages you to not worry about spelling, punctuation, or grammar.
In the age of autocorrect and spell-check, I don't know how much this kind of thing bogs us down like it used to when all we had was paper and typewriters. But there's a power in giving yourself permission to not make a publishable work right off the bat.
Often times, that is exactly what you need to get yourself to write at all.
If you haven't noticed yet, these guidelines are meant to break down many of the rules of convention that we tend to operate under. Society has trained us to be respectable, contained, polite people and though that has its place, on a piece of paper that we will most likely be the only one to read, respect and politeness have no place.
I'll explain in the next post that it's healing to allow yourself the space to express things as they are, but for now, let me stick to the point.
While writing, in addition to keeping your hand moving and not crossing out, see if you can write as it is in your head rather than how it "should" sound.
You want to start or end with a preposition? That's where it's at.
Don't want to capitalize? do it. be like bell hooks.
Want to make a run on sentence for daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaays? That's a great way to get into a stream of consciousness mindset which will totally give you a sense of creating energy and momentum and a sense of power over what you're saying and besides who knows where the sentence will end up it will probably take you to places that you had no idea exited inside you and isn't that the point you know to keep going and not stopping until you've finally released what's been holding you back?
School helped you to become something resembling a functioning adult (hopefully, maybe), but it's don't very little for helping to create self-aware individuals and successful artists.
Assuming some part of you desires to be at least one of those things, try this out and see what happens.
Tomorrow I'll share about a strategy that embodies much of the work I do in the treatment room as well.
Have I mentioned that writing can be healing?
Until then, here's your assignment:
When you try to let go of normal writing conventions, what comes up for you?
Are there rules you relish in breaking? Are there ones that are difficult to break?
