Writing as the Ultimate Heart-Healer: Restoring a Sense of Wonder
Are you writing this week? My guess: Maybe you’re too distracted. My two cents: You absolutely need to write. Because it’s a life-giving force in a time of drought, perhaps.
Sometimes we can’t write when we’re overwhelmed, outraged, or grieving. I know! I’ve been there, but this week, my writing is the most sane and worthwhile occupation I can possibly find. It provides energy as well as wholesome distraction. It reminds me of the goodness.
Some of this comes from soft-focus rather than reactivity. Deep in a story, I go all soft focused about the world, because I’m listening to my creative self more than any other voice. It’s like being half here, half in the fictional landscape I’m creating.
Do you find this?
Writing also forces me to step back and live in a state of wonder. I am inventing ideas. I am wondering about possibilities in a new way. There’s hope inside that. Spring coming, rather than endless winter.
Writing also tempers my often-instant reactions. Instead of having an immediate opinion, outraged or vindicated, I ask questions. I look for the “story behind the story,” as a writing friend puts it. I do this when I’m writing fiction or nonfiction: I try to see behind my characters’ single actions into their larger lives.
State of wonder
If you’ve experienced this kind of curiosity and wonder, it’s almost childlike—you know? Like you’re giving up being the expert and you’re allowing yourself to not know the answer. I find the best writing comes from this state of mind.
Writing is healing to me because it adds this sense of wonder to my life. The act of writing every day—my goal, maybe yours too?—puts me in a place where I’m a learner again. That openness of heart and mind transfers to my outer life as well. As I muse a story and let it fully capture my inner life, in my outer world I find myself going to the same place: wonder first, reaction less.
That’s why I write this newsletter, truthfully. To remind us all to set up our lives so creativity is foremost. Sustain a regular writing practice and it becomes your good medicine.
Setting up wonder
I’m taking care of a close family member who has just gone through surgery. I’ve done this before, years ago, when an aunt was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I felt called to help. So I reworked my working life to allow me to be with her several days a week, at minimum.
Tending post-surgery is not nearly as drastic, but it’s still an effort physically, emotionally, and mentally.
I knew this effort was going to take a lot of my time and energy. I thought how my writing life could help sustain me. I had a suspicion that when the new year rolled in, I would need a solid, sure reminder of goodness and stability. If life was going to get more chaotic, writing would once again bring what I needed.
So I set up a kind of study course that would let me bring in wonder every day, on purpose. I decided to dive into learning again.
I went to my two favorite online writing schools (Grub Street in Boston and The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis). They offer year-long and half-year classes that are application-only. Grub had a five-month course on building and refining a short-story collection, taught by Caroline Belle Stewart, an instructor I like and respect. It would be a cohort of ten writers, maximum, meeting online each week.
I applied last fall and was accepted. The course started in January.
Being a beginner instills wonder
In the writing life, I move from beginner to not. As my books are published, I move into a kind of “expert” role—podcast hosts and interviewers expect the author to know what they’re talking about when asked about their books, right? It’s exhilarating and wearying to publish, as many of you know, and by the end of the two years it took for the last two novels to be published and promoted, I longed for the “beginner” life again. I wanted the wonder that comes with learning.
Before the novels came out, while waiting for my agent to respond, I had signed up for a handful of online “generative fiction” classes where we were all beginners, no matter our publishing experience. My favorite ones focused on short form fiction, like flash.
What a relief! Both to not know anything and to write fun short pieces. Nowhere as easy as I expected, either. I had a lot to learn about flash. The instructors of generative classes are geared to encourage any ideas. I surpassed my own goals and generated 35 story ideas.
My agent takes her time, so I had months to develop many of these ideas. I finished some and submitted to lit magazines, even got ten published. The rest languished as my novels were released and I began promoting. I love my novels; I’m a novelist at heart, because I like to stick with my characters for a good long while. But I often thought of those stories. I missed the refreshment and wonder of the beginner’s life.
When I knew I’d be close to home for a while, taking care of my family member post-surgery, I was thrilled to dive into them again.
Holding questions curates wonder
I came into the class with a lot of questions. How does a writer decide which stories work together and form the collection? Is there always a theme? Do the stories need to be linked? How does a writer know—other than rejections when the stories are sent out—which still need work?
The course is structured around such questions, which I find healing and liberating. Each week, we read a published short-story collection and discuss it. The authors we’re reading come from such varied backgrounds and cultures: Palestinian, Jamaican, Indonesian, and American so far. We talk about the questions above for each book. Some are radical in their structure, almost like prose poems in their form. Some are traditional (beginning-middle-end in a predictable flow).
I know from my own teaching life that great learning is possible from reading and discussing other writers’ work. Each of these collections teaches me a new way of curating my own stories.
Get busy creating
My painting teacher long ago said that she painted every single day to stay out of trouble with herself. Now that my class is encouraging me to get back to daily writing, now that I’ve recovered from the push of publishing and marketing, I find that true for me too. I get in less trouble with myself (read: less worry, less angst, less trauma reaction) because I’m too busy creating.
One of the best questions I’ve begun asking: what am I trying to say with this story? I created an Excel chart with my 35 stories, their word count, their location and a few other details. Then I added a column for what I’m trying to say.
Another way of phrasing this: what’s the message or theme or purpose of this story?
I start to see a pattern when I do this. I can group my stories by their purpose. I found two that have almost identical purposes, so I tried combining them into one. The merge created one of the best stories I’ve written yet.
Another great question: where is the moment of transcendence in the story? An emotional turn, you might call it.
Many of the published authors we’re reading have this. Even if the story is super gritty, there’s a moment when the character moves beyond themselves to see or experience something larger. As I worked with this idea, I noticed the stories I feel are successful have this moment. The ones less so, don’t yet. Ah-ha! I thought. A pathway to follow as I revise.
Finally, I’m staying open to all possibilities. I am playing with magical realism. I’m exploring all kinds of narrative points of view. There are no closed doors in a state of wonder.
Your Weekly Writing Exercise
This week, I wanted to encourage you to reach out and learn something new. To be a beginner again, no matter how experienced you are as a writer. Learning is available to all of us, all the time.
If you’d like some spark of learning this week, here are a few of the most popular posts I published in 2024. Check out one that you missed!
Creating a Sustainable Writing Practice
Organizing Your Writing Life: Practice versus Perfect
Organizing Your Writing Life: Tools
Celebrating Yourself and Your Creativity
Three Favorite Techniques to Foster Meandering