Continuing to explore the Four Elements practice in writing, I want to think about Fire in a particular way.
Among other things, I relate Fire to intention in writing – what purpose fires you up and inspires you in a positive way and helps create a focus in your work? Sometimes writing is about tearing things down, but sometimes writing is about creating things fresh and new in ways that represent your ideal vision of the world. And this is where we can add a little Earth to create a particular setting and populate it with preferred characters for whom we makes stories with desired outcomes: utopias.
The dystopian novel is a well-established trend right now, and it’s not even funny to joke that we are living through dystopian times. So that is a good enough reason to make space for something a little less gloomy in our writing, perhaps?
I think, for example, about queer utopias. When I first came out, one of my favourite novels was Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, whose rainbow vision I ended up living when I moved to a Big Gay Flatshare in central London. I’ve kept on seeking out these idealised literary spaces in both books and the real world. Just last year I very much enjoyed the fluid forms of the novel Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, whose author, Andrea Lawlor, led me to the classic The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell.
It’s easy for me to make a leap from that book to Salmon Creek Farm, a queer commune in northern California that I stumbled across on Instagram. And then I am led back to Naropa University, where I studied and taught, which was most definitely born of a utopian impulse to bring mindfulness and contemplative education to the West.
And let’s not forget too that utopias also have their dystopian moments; in an odd quirk of serendipity, I received Lit Hub Daily as I typed the previous sentence, and that email led with a story about a shocking little incident in Naropa’s history when poet WS Merwin and his girlfriend were forced to strip naked at a party. Which reminded me of a Naropa Summer Writing Program panel devoted to utopias, where it was proposed that everyone has their own personal utopia, and one person’s utopia is another’s dystopia.
And maybe that is something to work out in the writing – teasing out tensions and conflicts is the stuff of good drama.
I also think the idea of community is important to utopias, and at this moment, when meeting up in person is less than straightforward, I think about gatherings such as Words Away – Kellie Jackson’s monthly salons and zalons devoted to books and the craft of writing.
The great thing about utopias is that they stimulate the imagination – not just for adventures in writing and reading, but for good ways to be together in the world.
As a writing experiment: Create a utopia.
First: draw a map of it.
Then: create a constitution or a manifesto for its guiding principles and inspirations.
Next: write a scene where a newcomer experiences the promise of this utopian space for the first time.
Then: write a subsequent scene where the complications or compromises of utopias are revealed …
Throughout, make space for your wildest desires and intentions – your preferred ways of being in the world.
In workshops and editorial mentoring I often use a Four Elements practice. It combines an intuitive sense of creativity with a practical grasp of craft and technique to offer a fresh way of looking at writing. I am planning online Four Elements workshops for the near future, so I thought it would be an idea to describe this in more detail.
I started exploring the Four Elements shortly after I moved back to London and began to focus my editorial work on developmental editing alongside teaching creative writing.
Something that often comes up with early drafts is that the writing often seems overthought, or cluttered; it can feel self-conscious, as if it is trying too hard, and it perhaps lacks ease of expression, or vigour, even though the basic idea might be a strong one. I wanted to help writers find approaches that would be more intuitive, growing naturally out of their own inspirations and taking shape authentically in ways that connect with readers. I felt that instead of thinking so much about writing, we need to find ways to feel our way into writing and also bring in other dimensions of experience. I usually invoke Ray Bradbury, who in ‘Zen in the Art of Writing’ tells us that a basic mantra of writing is: Don’t Think.
This of course presents something of a paradox, given that the very medium we work in as writers – words – requires some degree of cognition and thinking. And we also need to think through possibilities that help us in the task of Don’t Thinking!
There are numerous ways to approach Don’t Thinking, in fact. I’ve studied and taught creative writing at Naropa University, the birthplace of the modern mindfulness movement, and have a strong grounding in contemplative approaches in the arts. The simple task of slowing down and paying attention to the everyday and listening to yourself are strong foundations for any creative practice. I’m also a big fan of Natalie Goldberg, and her Writing Down the Bones and her emphasis on free writing have been a profound influence on my teaching.
I also began to explore the distinction between the left and right sides of the brain, for example through the work of artist-teachers Lynda Barry and Betty Edwards. Though the two hemispheres of the brain are interconnected, the left side is associated with verbal and analytic skills – words, numbers, and structures – while the right is linked with visual and perceptual skills and with intuition. We could perhaps say that some of those overthought manuscripts are a bit too left-brained, and could gain from opening up more of the right side – though we don’t do brain surgery in Four Elements workshops; we just consider these ideas about the brain as a symbolic framework.
I took myself in other directions too, particularly when I signed up for a class in tarot at Treadwell’s bookshop at its old location in Covent Garden. I was already familiar with the symbolism of the twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana, which offer powerful archetypes for storytelling, such as the Fool starting on his Journey, the mentor figure of the Magician, and the unexpected reversals of the Wheel of Fortune.
I now found myself drawn to the four suits of the Minor Arcana, with their elemental associations: Fire (Wands), Water (Cups), Earth (Pentacles), and Air (Swords). I began to explore the meanings and associations of the Four Elements in greater depth, and started to understand the range of their value to writers and artists. Through time they have come to play an important role in my teaching as well as my editorial work.
Sometimes it helps to focus on the elements individually, and sometimes to consider them in combination.
Fire is associated with energy, with the vital spark that brings writing to life and keeps it burning until the last word – we can think of this as the fuel for our writing, which can resonate in every sentence. I particularly associate fire with intention and theme: what are the ideas that inspire your writing, the passions that compel you to write? What do you want to achieve in your work? Sometimes, politics is involved in some way or other – and if it isn’t, what might that lack say? Paying closer attention to the craft of writing, I relate fire to developing the voice as an instinctively grown vehicle energising our stories. I talk about syntax, especially how we select grammatical subjects and verbs for the ways they can bring pace and charge to our sentences. I also like to think about the energy created through the conflicts, reveals and twists of dynamic plotting. What are the drivers of your story?
Water is related to the world of emotion. What does the writing make a reader feel? How does it move the reader? What lasting impression does it leave? I particularly relate this to the ways in which writers craft the inner lives of characters and work with point of view. On a sentence level, I consider how we can shift the tone with, for example, word choice, pronouns, repetition, rhythm, or sentence variety – the music in our writing.
Earth represents the material realm of experience, and its embodiment in words. Settings and the outer worlds of characters are obvious associations for earth: how are the sense perceptions that bring them to life evoked on the page: sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures? Also, how does the story move forward with action and gesture (we bring in some fire here too), and what might be the roles in the writing, for example, of bodies and spaces, or sex and violence? I also pay attention to the grounding power of nouns relative to the moving energy of verbs.
I often discuss the practicalities of publishing and making a living as a writer as earthly concerns too.
Air brings us back to thinking and the world of mental formations – not as cluttered or overthought writing, but for its clarity of expression and ideas. I usually talk about the strength of its organisation: narrative structure, and the shape or form of the piece (here also bringing in some earth). And I often discuss symbolism and figures of speech, and return to theme: how has that initial spark of inspiration developed a consistent focus throughout the piece? What does the writing shed light on?
The Four Elements is a dynamic system. Elements do not work alone, but need to be cultivated in balance, and different pieces of writing emphasise different elements. A punk song might be all fire, whereas a boyband ballad might be a blend of water and earth (lots of feeeeelings, and the promise of S E X).
When reading manuscripts, I often think about the balance of the Four Elements too – even if I end up translating this into a different language for the uninitiated! For example, I can think of unpublished works of fantasy and science fiction that were really strong in their world-building and high concepts (earth and air), but lacked pace and emotional connection (fire and water) – they didn’t work so well as a story, but felt static, like a tableau. And sometimes intention (fire) is not apparent beyond an insistent urge to write about a particular topic, and focus and clarity emerge with a structured writing practice (air) that helps to fan those flames and stop them going out; writing prompts and exercises can also add layers of emotional depth (water).
In Everyday Magic and other Four Elements workshops I’ve taught at Words Away and elsewhere, we put these ideas into practice with readings and discussion as well as meditations and, of course, prompts and writing experiments. Writers seem to appreciate the new lens through which they can see their writing and experience it as a felt practice. Breakthroughs occur – writers often know at a subconscious level what needs attention, and a fresh approach that emphasises intuition helps them to experience their writing beyond just thinking about it or going round in circles or scrolling down a screen.
I should stress that in this context of writing and teaching we don’t dwell on the fortune-telling reputation of tarot; I know some people are spooked by esoteric practices, or have backgrounds in religious traditions that perceive the tarot as dangerous – in which case perhaps I should have put this paragraph at the very start to calm the fearful! And some writing friends have, I suspect, felt some of this is a bit woo woo and indulgent, with Andrew entertaining his inner hippie a bit too much. But, in fact, I no longer hide or qualify this; many, many people in creative and artistic fields have a deep-seated curiosity or experience with tarot or other fields such as astrology or the Kabbalah, and are open to their power as intuitive tools.
And, importantly, the arts need ways in which we can explore creativity freely, beyond the market and the grasping for a book deal, and the Four Elements offers a practical framework that is open to personal interpretation and meaning. Lately I’ve been reading a lot of ecological literature, and I’ve been finding the Four Elements resonating (of course!) in wonderful books such as Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane.
(That thing about grasping for a book deal. I mean: yes, we want you to get published. But I propose that that comes simply from writing a book that someone wants to read, and so often that sort of energy – that fire – is transmitted by an authentic book that is written from the heart rather than an agent or editor’s second-guessing of the market.)
In fact the Four Elements have a much wider reach than esoteric fields. The Four Elements appear in both classical and medieval philosophy. Then we also have the four humours and the four temperaments, and let’s not forget the four winds, the four gospels, and the four seasons (reinterpreted for literary studies by Northrop Frye in his Anatomy of Criticism).
Traces of the Four Elements can also be found in fields of psychology. The questions in Myers-Briggs tests, for example, ascertain how you make decisions or interact with other people: At parties do you enjoy getting into the action on the dance floor (fire), or do you prefer to have intellectual discussions one on one over a glass of Merlot in the kitchen (air)? And, notably, Carl Jung’s ideas about the quaternity identifies the four psychic functions of intuiting, feeling, sensing and thinking, which roughly correspond with the values of fire, water, earth, and air.
And of course there are many other systems of working symbolically. Buddhists add to the four a fifth element – Space – while the Chinese have a Five Elements philosophy too, though the elements are different ones: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. Seven chakras are found in Indian culture. I also invite writers to think in terms of other frameworks: how might you find qualities of animal, vegetable or mineral in your writing? External categories do not need to define us, but are structures that help us in looking at the world – so why not make your own?
Perhaps consider your own intuitive powers: if you are a cook, for example, how might you relate to your writing in terms of ingredients (veggies, sugars, raising agents), method (baking, slow-cooking, flash-fry), presentation and form (snack, midweek meal, tasting menu, banquet). Writers will usually find strength from working with points of reference they respond to intuitively.
Whichever symbolic system you follow, it will possess its own alchemy – your capacity to create something from your own creative spirit. I like the simple balance of the Four Elements – and also the fact that four different qualities are about the most I can hold in my head at one time.
I often hold workshops and masterclasses in person and online too – some draw on aspects of the Four Elements, and some have more of a craft focus. If you are interested, subscribe to my blog or drop me a line via my Contact page.
And if you’d like to explore the Four Elements in your own writing, take a look at this simple exercise: Looking For The Four Elements. Or try one of these specific exercises devoted to Fire, Water, Earth, or Air. Or try some Field Work.
A very simple exercise in looking for the Four Elements in writing – simple is so often best.
As a writing experiment, select an extract of your own writing and share it with a reader, or even better exchange extracts with a writing partner. Looking for the Four Elements in someone else’s work will help you develop this way of looking at your own writing too.
Ask them to tell you:
* What is its fire? Where does the energy of its voice rise and fall? (We can’t be high-energy all the time, after all.) Where does the reader feel the most energy in the piece, and why and how: which events or images or words grab their attention and make a difference in some way? What brings it to life?
* What is its water? How does the writing make the reader feel? And how might its emotional charge shift within a scene and the piece overall: how might the reader describe the emotional pitch at the start, and then at the end?
* What is its earth? What experiences of the material world are embodied in the writing? What sensory perceptions make an impact during the reading: visual images, sounds, smells, tastes, textures? What actions and gestures carry the piece forward? And what lingers afterwards?
* What is its air? What is clearly understood from this piece: what ideas have been conveyed, or what might it make the reader think about? Are characters and settings clearly distinguished from each other? Is the writing’s organisation and structure easy to follow – what might need clarification or focus?
Sometimes we get or need more detailed feedback, but it can help to keep things crisp and concise. One of the challenges of working with feedback and revising your work is getting overwhelmed, so finding ways to cut through to what’s important can be empowering.
This last couple of months I’ve had the great privilege of taking once again the online course based on Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down The Bones. It’s made up of a self-paced sequence of videos and readings, with additional live sessions for writing collectively. Most of the live writes had 250-300 people attending, or more. I first took it last year, and this year I signed up to take part in the live sessions (a kind offering from Shambhala Publications).
Every Wednesday and Saturday I sat and wrote off a couple of ten-minute prompts, and then I read out what I wrote to complete strangers in Portland, in New Mexico, in West Yorkshire, in New York State, in Boulder. And then I listened to their writing, and by the end of the session we were no longer complete strangers. It was some of the most special and precious writing I’ve ever heard, or read. Raw, real, true, intimate. Writing is, after all, about far more than being published.
One great feature is Natalie’s presence – even in those videos her spirit and attitude and emotional intelligence are infectious. The live writes were led by a group of wonderful facilitators who’ve worked with Natalie for years, but Natalie also came to some of them, and in addition she hosted three live Q&A sessions herself. It was a delight to see her field questions – direct, quick, wise, funny, generous, sometimes heartbreaking. No wonder she has so many fans.
In addition to Writing Down The Bones, I’d read others of her books before – Wild Mind, Thunder and Lightning, Old Friend From Far Away, Banana Rose – and I’ve been reading a few others recently: Long Quiet Highway, Living Color, The True Secret of Writing, The Great Spring. During these months of quarantine, when I’ve often found it hard to lose myself in a book, Natalie has been great company. Her voice, her concerns, her perceptions. Everyday life, straight talking. Those zen ideas of waking up, of following the mind, of being present. During a time when so much else feels trivial or scary or tedious, Natalie’s writing just feels REAL. I highly recommend anything that she’s written, and not just for writers. Again, Natalie is in all of her work: present.
And she is a phenomenal teacher. I once saw her read at the Boulder Book Store, and she said something I’ll always remember: ‘I think I’m a good writer, but I’m a great teacher.’ The self-insight and honesty of that statement struck me then and strikes me now. I think she is a great writer – a great communicator.
In the online class, as in her in-person workshops, Natalie’s prompted writes have simple rules. Don’t stop, keep the pen moving, don’t cross out, use whatever flashes in your mind – follow the mind, the ‘yooman mind’ as Natalie says, and write it down.
Also: feel free to write the worst crap in America (or Twickenham). I don’t believe in crap in writing, anyway. (Crap in published writing: that’s another matter.) This frees you to write authentically, and explore things on the page without self-consciousness. This is about writing freely, instinctively. This is about writing as a practice.
There are many, many gifts for us in Natalie’s work, but something I took away this time was the idea of sharing our writing without feedback.
When we went into our breakout sessions, we were instructed simply to listen, and then to say thank you, and that was that. (Sometimes you do simple acts of recall, recollecting simple details or impressions created in the writing – this can be one of the most useful pieces of feedback of all.)
This idea of not getting feedback on your writing runs counter to various models of writing workshops, especially in academic and professional contexts, where workshops are often founded on the idea of a dozen or so writers sharing work and then getting feedback one by one. Some workshops have strict guidelines: the writer with work under discussion cannot speak; timed sections of feedback; the word ‘flow’ cannot be used (yes, I’ve heard of that one).
Which is fantastic when it goes well. Deadlines produce work. Your writing is tested on readers. Valuable insights are given, and lessons are learned. A manuscript is revised. Creative community and genuine friendships are made. Sometimes manuscripts turn out to match the tastes and interest of agents and publishers, as well as the market. Happy writer becomes happy author, with happy readers.
But workshops and writing groups can have downsides. (1) Committee mind. Or love-ins. And (2) half-cooked feedback, sometimes made on the basis of the speaker needing to say something, rather than something needing to be said. And (3) half-cooked writing – the writing itself is often shared far too soon for any sort of valuable editorial input. Which can all end up a bit (4) fraying and dispiriting. No wonder writers such as Lucy Ellmann and Todd McEwen and Anis Shivani are so critical of workshops, and periodically culture sections reheat articles on the merits of the MA/MFA in creative writing.
There are other ways to organise workshops or feedback, though; Bhanu Kapil, for example, gets writers in her workshops to work in smaller ‘pods’ of three, which can be more fruitful for meaningful and manageable exchanges. Susan Bell, in The Artful Edit, encourages writers to find writing partners with whom you can exchange work, and many writers prefer to work one on one in that way. Many successful writing groups see writers offering supportive and helpful feedback.
But, too, this Natalie Goldberg rule of No Feedback really gave me pause.
Of course we get feedback on our drafts along the way, and of course we need cheerleaders. But I realised: when and where that feedback comes is vital, as is opening yourself to what comes out of writing when it’s freed of a particular outcome. I’ve blogged about getting feedback before.
What was so powerful about the Writing Down The Bones reads was that the act of listening was emphasised. Listening to other people. Simply listening to people express themselves. And then being listened to by people who say thank you and otherwise remain silent. There is a very straightforward pleasure in these intimate transactions. It’s also a powerful way to develop your intuition.
This class also introduced me to a wonderful listening meditation practice. We usually follow the breath in meditation, but this time we followed what we heard, though without paying attention to it. If you don’t quite grasp that: you had to be there! It felt profound.
Through all of this, what happens most strongly is that you start listening to yourself. You are simply voicing what you have to say in a safe space, aware you are being listened to but not waiting to hear what they think. Instinctively, you start paying attention to your own writing in a new way. You start to feel your own writing – its vibrational qualities, where it comes to life, what you are wanting to say.
I also relate this to the distinction I’ve come across in Buddhist thought between observingmind and judgingmind. All writing – or any creative output – relies on a mix of sensory perception with critical evaluation to be rendered into form. (More of that in another post, perhaps.)
We can of course solicit views from the professionals. I give editorial feedback for a living, after all! It’s what editors do. And we can, if given a tangible brief, write towards a tasked outcome with a commission attached. But so often, with creative projects, we have to find our own way. We have to develop an instinct. And whatever other people tell us, we often already know deep down inside what it is we need to express in writing.
We haven’t always got there yet. Sometimes we have to get out of our way first. We have to shelve neurosis, stop grasping, give up trying to second-guess the market. Not least, if we’re interested in publishing, because we know that so often the agents and publishers are second-guessing the market anyway. When they start working with her, Natalie tells writers not to think about publishing. She tells them to go away and write for two years. Develop a writing practice. Discover what you have to say, and how you want to say it. Listen to it.
Sometimes we simply have to rid ourselves of the prospect of feedback (at least for now). By listening to what we have to say, and telling ourselves that the feedback can come later, we start to observe our writing, rather than judge it. What’s there? Suddenly we start to own our writing, and feel its power.
This zen approach to suspending judgment as a means of developing our intuition is not unique to Natalie Goldberg. Lynda Barry, for example, tasks her students on drawing tight spirals as they listen in silence to their colleagues read their work. Otherwise Lynda says, ‘Good! Good!’ And that is it.
That simple act of expression is golden. Read your work to someone else. Be heard. And listen carefully to yourself.
As a writing experiment: Find someone to read your writing to. Exchange prompts, and write for ten minutes on each one. Then read them to each other. Then say thank you. No other feedback. Just thank you. It’s one of the most empowering writing practices you’ll ever develop.
As a writing experiment, use the prompt I never … to write a list-based piece exploring the inner and outer lives for a main character, starting every sentence with the phrase I never. Write for ten minutes, making this a free write, keeping the pen moving and seeing what comes up; if you find yourself halting or drying up, just write I never … again and let a fresh association surface for your character. Try to include specific and concrete references: project inner feelings on to physical objects, introduce particular settings, make detailed references to other characters, create complications.
I do recommend writing by hand for that organic connection between pen and paper and body and soul. But too sometimes a keyboard works better for some writers – comes naturally. And sometimes we get cramps in our hands, or our writing is slower than our thoughts – though too there’s no harm in slowing down occasionally. Explore, perhaps, and do whatever works for you.
In this instance, think about the choice of the word never, which is often used in contexts related to regret or loss or lack or failings or yearnings on the part of character: super plot drivers. You could even make the nevers a list of blatant denials (lies). What surfaces often goes to the heart of your character’s plottings.
Also: the list form has distinctive effects.
It comes easy, and has a cadence and a rhythm.
It enjoys the simple forward-moving power of the right-branching syntax of everyday speech; variations in the patterning of the sentence can add emphasis and curiosity.
The repetition has a powerful insistence that digs deep into your character’s basic drives, subconsciously drawing on instinct instead of depending on overly thought-out writing.
The list is a straightforward form to write, too – once you run out of something to say about a particular never, you can start a new sentence and find something else. Lean into the scaffolding you have created.
Some of them (I never, I don’t remember, I don’t want) have a tendency of drawing on darker material – what Natalie Goldberg might says ‘pulls in the shadow’, which as Natalie says can be the real ‘juice’ in writing.
Repeat variations of this exercise for your character on different occasions. Maybe try these for ten minutes every day for a week. Let this character’s urges and insistences inhabit you for the whole week. Then, making this a practice, in following weeks repeat these exercises for other characters. See what surfaces. Then take this material into your story.
You could also do simply for yourself as personal writing that might – or might not – feed another creative project.
This is a useful exercise to carry out as part of your planning or alongside your drafting, or perhaps if you are getting stuck in your writing. It’s helpful with plotting – I used this in a couple of plotting workshops for The Literary Consultancy this week. Such simple prompts can really help with the sorts of primal work that writing often needs, that digging for fossils that Stephen King describes in On Writing.
And another powerful use of the list structure is Zoe Leonard’s remarkable I Want A President, which I used recently in a Finding Your Fire workshop for tapping into and expressing our intention in writing. Note the effects of repetition and variation – the emphasis, the accumulations; the POWER.
I always love to hear about those ways into writing that come natural, come easy (well, I should qualify that: we do have to do the work of showing up, which isn’t always easy). Prompts such as these often raise things that nudge our characters into the sorts of situations that make for good plots.
Meanwhile, on an entirely other note: pictures of tulips, above, as it’s already time to think about which ones to order for delivery in the autumn … I think that is Ballerina with, I think, Queen of the Night?
