I exerienced a breakthrough this week. I wrote my way into and through it, an experience hidden under so much thought and stuff and opinion and fear that when it all tumbled forward, I knew I was done with it. Finally.
Writing prompts are powerful. This is one of the reasons I write them in a variety of forms.
This week I took a prompt from my "U is for Underneath" prompt from The Bold Writer from A to Z series I recently ran. Be my guest in using any/all of the prompts there.
Here is the prompt that guided my words into a breakthrough:
What do you hide underneath things in your writing life?
What is the reason for holding things under rather than bringing them into the open?
I processed my response later in the day:
This morning I wrote something I haven’t wanted to write.
Lately I’ve been shaking stuff out from my memory, allowing bits and pieces of gunk to have their say - well, to a certain extent. It doesn’t mean I let all of it “out in public” but I do know there is a value beyond monetary gain or basking in the adoring glow of readers (note the tongue in cheek) from getting that stuff that sits underneath our normal writing and sharing it with others.
Two weeks ago I was writing with a group of women I’ve been writing with for nearly ten years. What came across for most of the women a gentle even funny prompt lead me to write of a memory that has festered for years just out of my writing’s reach. I tugged at it and it tumbled down and I fumbled with free flow to loose its grip on me.
That - my loves - is why we do it.
Watch what happens when we “fumble with free flow”. What happens is the stuff that has a tight rein on us tumbles to our feet and we are now bigger and taller and stronger and more able to poke it without fear of being injured once again.
The first time I read the words aloud I could not catch my breath.
I didn’t want to say the words aloud and I did. I read those unedited words to my writing circle that day. I said them aloud.
The response was positive and caring. They were as varied as the women who spoke them. The thing is… the thing continues to be… what was once just out of reach, just underneath, just far enough away to taunt me is now under my control.
I don’t need to wonder about it or cower in its shadow.
I don’t need to point my finger at anyone for victimizing me at any age because now I am the one who is choosing, consciously, victory over it.
Do you see the magic and the transformation in this stance?
I feel sort of like a woman coming to a hat-check stand she left long ago. A sweet little girl hat was left there in 1966 and now, in 2014, she is reclaiming it. She takes it in her hands and she molds it into a style reflecting that year’s vintage along with her restored chutzpah. Her restored vigor. Her restored autobiography.
The courage to look underneath what was hiding under decades of unwritten words is unloosed just like that - in a blink - and now life continues along just that much better.
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Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people's creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming Spring, 2014 and beyond.
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