If the Weird Barbie on the Hill had a Writer’s Desk
Here we are, 2024. The life of a writer, this writer, keeps on keeping on.
I thought I’d share my desk with you, and maybe take a few days to show you some of the “weird stuff” that has become part of my journey in writing memoir. I’m sharing short posts each day on Facebook and Instagram (@foxtalesforsoul), and sharing my thoughts here too with a few days musings collected into a longer post.
Day 1: The strange craft of story.
Memoir writing, specifically me writing my own memoir and me reading other people’s memoir, is probably an extension of my life as a psychotherapist. Stories, stories and more stories.
I believe that finding, re-membering and retelling our stories can heal us. A therapist provides an external companion in this work. I’ve sat and listened and understood and witnessed as my clients find the pieces and weave them together to create meaning, to know the truth of their experiences and to restore peace and compassion to their inner world.
The writer is their own witness first and foremost. As I write I show myself the deeper truths that have been hidden from my awareness. As I work on what I have written to hone it and make it something that perhaps one day others will read, I learn compassion for myself and the others in my story – nobody wants to read a story that is full of unprocessed raw pain and rage and bitterness. Characters need to be real, not cardboard, so I need to find their truth as well as my own. And my story needs a “likeable narrator” – I need to own what makes me likeable, I need to learn to like myself more than I learned to do in childhood. And that’s the journey.
Day 2:
The Joy of Notebooks.
I started by sharing how I think writing, life writing or memoir in particular, helps the work of healing and growth. I have all sorts of tools for writing, some sleek and high tech, others not so much. Today I’m writing in praise of notebooks – believe me, I have so many you could call it an addiction. Though can anybody possible have too many notebooks? Seriously?!
I love the tangibility of a good notebook, the physical presence of this wodge of paper that is going to hold my thoughts. At times it feels like the notebook is the container for my sanity, I’m writing down thoughts that might be shocking or disturbing, ideas that seem a bit crazy, using imagery and metaphor that can feel completely over the top. But the notebook will stay steady, keeping my secrets, page by page, leaving the ink where I put it, turning craziness into literature – where, after all, craziness is common.
My notebooks are also where I release what Anne Lamott calls the “shitty first draft” onto the page. I can just write everything down as it comes to mind without it being in the right order, well structured or even correctly spelled. My word processor draws my attention to errors with wiggly red lines or highlights, repeatedly letting me know that what I’ve written is not good enough. My notebook doesn’t judge.
There’s something about pen and paper that means it’s OK to have crossings out, to play with arrows connecting ideas, better verbs written above, more accurate metaphors jotted along the sides. My notebook pages become a safe space to explore without knowing the answers, without having to get it right.
And when I take a step back, perhaps days or weeks later, and revisit my pages, little gems will jump out at me. A great descriptive sentence, a memory that suddenly tilts slightly in the light to allow a glimpse of whatever is hiding behind it, and occasionally I find that I’ve written down something about myself that I didn’t know I knew.
Containing, non-judgemental, exploration, play, discovery, truth – all features of good therapy, present in my notebooks.
P.S. I’m on Instagram too if you fancy following me there @foxtalesforsoul
#writer #Psychotherapist #memoirwriting #writersdesk #writers #writerlife #writerinspiration #inspiredtowrite
If you’re interested in zooming in with me as I consider what’s on my desk and how it supports me as I write and heal and grow, please follow along! In the meantime, you can do the “follow” thing on Instagram @foxtalesforsoul, or on Facebook Foxtales for Soulbuilding, and I’ll see you soon 