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?
This is a writing experiment for someone who wants a boost of energy to take their revising deeper, or anyone who’s come to a bit of a halt in their drafting. It could also be a valuable exercise in the early stages of planning a book.
Writing experiment: Reread a favourite book of your childhood, or a favourite fairy story or myth you first encountered as a child. Perhaps choose something that was once important to you, but that you have not read in ages. You might have even forgotten most of its details, or there might be several variations – in which case it could be interesting to compare them.
It’s also good to listen to audio versions, or maybe to get someone to read them to you. Sometimes listening can arouse memories and deep feelings in a way that reading a printed page cannot. (Though audiobooks were not an option back then, I now am remembering my vinyl 45 Read Alongs of Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat and Disney’s It’s A Small World …)
As you read/listen, jot down any details that strike your attention. Characters, objects, settings. Turning points, emotional shifts, inexplicable but enthralling twists and reversals. Look out for powerful archetypes, or currents and themes that have played a role in your future life. Also jot down any particular lines or scenes that really pop out to you, or things you didn’t notice before.
Now: consider how these striking ingredients can serve as vectors for your work-in-progress in some way. VECTOR: a quantity that possesses weight and momentum as well as direction. How can these new ingredients add ballast and depth and forward-moving energy to your story?
You could add details in a literal way: the Little House books invite you to trap your characters in a snowstorm, or Alice in Wonderland gives you a disorganised tea party. Or you could translate more deeply, if indirectly, e.g., developing a character’s princess complex (remember that men can be princesses too). Or rereading The Secret Garden might help you see how a clearer focus could be built around the loneliness of a protagonist. Or you could introduce, however loosely, three wishes into a story to help give it some shape and pacing through repetition and progression.
I recently reread ‘The Pomegranate Seeds’ from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales. I was reading an edition originally read aloud to us at primary school; my teacher gave it to me on her retirement – yes, I was teacher’s pet – so this particular volume already had magic powers.
Hawthorne’s retelling is forty pages long, more fleshed out and fictionalised than some of the sketchy renditions I would later encounter in other contexts. It uses the names Proserpina and Pluto from the Roman version, which in turn is based on the Greek myth of Persephone and Hades; there are always retellings.
There are plenty of archetypes: innocents and predators, and mothers – in this reading, Ceres (Demeter) figures more strongly as the protagonist, and this time I felt this story more deeply as one of loss and reconciliation and compromise.
I found myself latching on to a few details in this read too. The number six of the pomegranate seeds. The dryads and naiads: I’ve always been fascinated with these spirits of woods and water, and I realise that this was probably the first time I encountered them, at the age of seven.
I was also intrigued by the line that tells us that Pluto pats Proserpine’s cheek, ‘for he really wished to be kind, if he had only known how’ – an oddly human (or inhuman) detail.
I also noted that the seven-year-old me had no idea he’d be reading Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter as an American Studies undergraduate some eleven years later, or buying the collected novels of Hawthorne in a used bookstore in Provincetown at the turn of the century.
And rereading this little red Tanglewood I was whisked back to Mrs Bentley’s classroom. I remembered the nature table, and the portable shelf of library books. I remembered listening to her read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Wind in the Willows.
And I also remembered the time I played Rumpelstiltskin in a school play. I had to wear green tights and a green crepe paper tunic, and spin a polystyrene spinning wheel and sing a song, and I still know all its lyrics OFF BY HEART. Spin wheel, spin / Turn wheel, turn / And every straw / Upon the floor / Turn to shining god. I probably need a therapist to unpack all this! A Jungian, please.
And Rumpelstiltskin is not only a story of hiding your name, your truth, but also the story of HAVING A FUNNY NAME. Duh, I only just saw that one! Seriously: I’ve only recently realised the burden and trauma of GROWING UP WITH A FUNNY NAME. Millions of words have been devoted to critiques of white male heterosexual privilege and the inequalities of economic class, but has anyone ever studied the psychosocial effects of the name you inherit?!
But: we all come to live with our truths, and I’d never change being a Wille.
All these triggers, all these elemental details. All these haunting and defining motifs – these themes of a life. It’s rich stuff that wakes something inside us that brings our writing to life. Many of these stories from childhood are so deeply part of who we are. The flying carpet, the magic wardrobe, the talking animals, the little details we’ve forgotten or read differently as adults: they captured our imaginations as children, and they trigger our imaginations today.
I guess we could worry about copyright and the use of other people’s ideas, but hey: the school for wizards existed before Harry Potter, right?! So many of these stories are retellings, based on archetypes. The important thing is to make these ingredients our own, and to shape and express them in our own way.
Later you might want to explore this rich field further, but for now don’t overthink this task. Just reread the magical texts of your childhood with a notebook to hand, and see how you can relate various themes and details to your work today.
Where do your eyes and heart and mind take you, and how do you bring your findings back into your writing? How do they give you details or currents to work through in your drafting and revisions?
If you are looking to buy any children’s books, I *highly* recommend The Alligator’s Mouth in Richmond (now able to fulfil online order requests in the UK). SUPPORT YOUR INDIE BOOKSHOPS! The book world relies on them.
Also check out Zoe Gilbert’s London Lit Lab workshops based on analysis of fairy tales and folklore.
This month I was going to make a thoughtful post/papal address – something topical on slow writing, or productivity, or how to crochet a big gay rug for lockdown dance parties in your big gay commune. But everyone is a poster/pope now, and there is so much guidance and advice and ‘content’ out there that we could spend a lifetime of quarantines just reading the index.
Also: though I am very good at slow writing, I am no expert on productivity – preacher, heal thyself, etc.
So instead I am going to post a writing experiment inspired by something that’s far more important. Something that has been a real salve of late.
TULIPS.
I love tulips. I love gardens and I love gardening. We have a tiny garden, and I fill its beds with ferns and shrubs, and I fill the gaps with pots, and I fill many of those pots with bulbs. And one day in spring you turn your head, and colour and texture and form are there where they weren’t before. Especially in the bold form of
TULIPS
I planted 345 tulip bulbs back in November/December, and every morning since early April I have gone out in the garden to check on their progress. Cruellest month, my arse; Eliot is as bad as Plath, who described a tulip as a ‘wound’ – insert Scream emoticon! Two misery-guts together, spectres with their mugs lurking above Anglo-American poetry.
Back to my tulips – not wounds, but salves, comforts, great joys. Just a few duds this year (a pot of Tulipa humilis Liliput that I fear I waterlogged). Otherwise: the tulips are a thesaurus of pinks and plums and oranges.
And their names! Some grand, some silly, some wtf. And each name belongs to its tulip – sometimes a perfect fit, sometimes a less comfortable description but an interesting combination all the same. Trusty Ballerina, fey Orange Angelique, lush Jan Reus – admire his crimson hues at the top of the page. Prinses Irene like a flirty divorcée, hunky Havran, seductive Paul Scherer the sales director. China Pink: spiky and funny and intelligent – a scientist, I suspect (see just above). Each has its own personality, profession, deepest yearnings.
Sometimes they talk about me behind my back while I’m drinking my tea, like these Ballerinas above.
Sometimes I have to break up fights – check out these Queens of the Night ganging up on a couple of those bitchy Ballerinas in the rain.
Some are flashy, and even when they are getting old and a bit crispy at the edges they love to show their drawers. They remind me of my nan. These above are called Burgundy, but they look mauve to me. Which just goes to show: appearances are deceiving. Also applies to my nan …
So far this year I’ve taken 236 photos of tulips on my iPhone. I keep them in a special album, which is why I, unlike Priti Patel, can provide accurate statistics. I’ve posted some others on my Instagram. Sometimes I feel I am overdoing it with the photos, but I guess that’s what photographers do – you just take pics until you are happy with one. And they make me very happy.
From the vantage of my hermitage, and after however many weeks it is (three, six, a Priti thirty-four), I’ve come to realise that dogs and plants and books are on the whole my preferred company.
In other tulip news, I broke the longest fast of book-buying in my life, and ordered myself a belated birthday present in the form of Anna Pavord’s The Tulip, which for some reason I never got round to reading before. I am glad I waited, as last year it came out in a sumptous twentieth-anniversary edition, and it is GORGEOUS. Tulips for year round – and for planning my pots for 2021, and beyond.
Anyway, at the risk of being a bit Let Them Eat Tulips: I want to use tulips for a writing experiment in which you create a story. This is what I propose:
1. Pick half a dozen of your favourite tulips. Use some of the inspirations listed in the links below. Or go out into your garden or to a florist and pick some yourself, if you can. Be drawn to their hues, their shapes, their names perhaps, and what they represent to you.
2. Write their names down the side of a piece of paper. (Leave space for working beside each one.)
3. Now put them to work. Sort these names out. Take notes. Some of the names will be characters. Some will be settings, either the names you give to places, or places you can take your story to. Some might be the names of random objects that will set your story in action. Some might have other resonances: themes, workplaces, ambitions, character flaws.
4. And now: put all of these names together into a story. I’m here thinking of Ursula Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, where you put various ingredients into a container and then work out their connections: How do they describe themselves, and how do others see them? What are their deepest yearnings, and their inner conflicts, and how do these create tensions among the group? How do they sit in each other’s company, and what do they give or take from each other? What part of the world are they in? What story do they have to tell?
Then write it up. You can change names later, if the tulip names seem a little too peculiar for the story you end up with. Or you might just want to create tulippy variants.
Have fun with this. It is often a good idea to start with a name, and then just let your imagination go wild. You could ever do variations with the names of other plants: types of roses, the brassy monikers of heucheras, cultivars of apples. Or extend this idea to other catalogues: the names of yoga poses or cars, or product names from Ikea.
If you want some inspirations for tulip names, though, try some of the following links and departure points (excuse us, Black Knight and Don Quichotte!):
* The tulip pages at Avon Bulbs (my favourite supplier)
* Elegant Tulip Bulbs (new to me, but this site apparently lists over 3,700 tulip names – can’t be true, or can it?! you might have to Google some of the images)
* Annie Proulx, whose use of names for characters and places is astonishing. Absurd, even, but I’m not complaining. Jack Twist, Lightning Flat, Brokeback Mountain, Quoyle, Petal Bear, Dakotah, Charles Duquet. Some of those could be tulip names.
… Black Night, Don Quichotte, China Pink, Havran, and Barcelona … and …
… probably my fave of all, lusty Jan Reus.
We’ll be welcoming in the summer by then, but note that I am teaching an online workshop on Perfect Plotting for The Literary Consultancy via Zoom on Wednesday 24 June at 4-6pm – more details at this link.
And I am planning other online workshops too. Subscribe to my blog for further information when it’s ready.
