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Below an article I wrote for the course, by way of introduction:
Five days alone on the side of a mountain in the Picos De Europa, was the first time I took an invitation to express myself in writing seriously. I was in my early twenties. My brief was to produce something that represented my personal response to the mountain environment. I made rudimentary sculptures and wrote poems to accompany them. Ever since it has been what I do when I don’t have to do anything else. In the pauses and in between times, on the back of bus tickets, bleary eyed on my phone when I have woken at night, chalk words on the pavement, fridge thoughts or of course the pensive notebook at a cafe. It all stems back to that extended solitude on a mountain, being exposed to awe and wonder, having a little less comfort and distraction.
Sometimes you need an invitation to get into writing. Creative writing can seem an odd proposition, from a distance its utility is opaque. In the doing of it though the need for reason falls away. Instead it is flow and it is consciousness revealed, a process of intimacy with yourself that is inherently valuable. We all have stories about ourselves and our ability to write. Fashioned by faltering voyages through education systems we grow into adults that quietly tell ourselves we are not the type of person that writes for pleasure or discovery, that it is the preserve of a particular kind of person. Yet there are so many reasons to take the plunge and write. For the purposes of this article I will explore my current top three. All three have to do with flow, hence the title. By flow I borrow the ideas of Mihaly Csikszentmihaly who has explored the state we get into when time evaporates and we are fully attuned with ourselves. He meant it when referring to optimal experiences and excellence in the execution of skills, though I see it in the creative act of writing too.
A mirror to the self – Writing allows your brain to process your thoughts in an alternative way. Write to find out what is true, as an excavation of the mind. This form of honesty is confronting, as the thoughts flow we encounter ourselves. It is a slower pace too so we are able to wrestle and negotiate and ultimately make peace with all our parts, the murky and decrepit as well as the shiny and leaping. So creative writing can encourage self-knowledge and empathy. Two character traits we all need and our society is hungry for.
For catharsis – This is closely linked to the first, but warranted deeper focus. I don’t want to sell creative writing as a silver bullet to all mental health issues, but I do believe it can be a useful part in a larger picture of support. In my writing lies a longing for connection, at times it has been a dance with loneliness. Often, I have uncurled myself from the foetal positon to write uncensored the sharp end of my pain. In the writing, I scour the darkness for meaning and possibility. Become an architect trying to seek out the light to reflect life in some new way. A practice of trust. Acknowledging that in this act at least, in the moment of writing, I am taking a stand against futility. Though first its honesty. It’s the invitation to be brave and write your truth into the world, pulling it from your mind into the present where it can be seen and accepted, where motives, secrets and idiosyncrasies can be offered compassion. Where hopefully an active healing can begin. I believe that this potential for writing to be balm in the chaos, grief and urgency of our internal and external worlds is of particular relevance to us now. Rapid climate breakdown and catastrophic biodiversity loss infuses our collective consciousness and needs to breakthrough into our conversations and writing each day. The thorny work of realising how we are locked into a deathly embrace with fossil fuels is heavy. Facing our destructive relationship with nature is heavy, the loss we are faced with and the prognosis for our futures can be unbearable. If these things weigh on you writing is a good place to start, writing is often a gateway to other action, indeed that is part of the origin story of The Word Forest Organisation, words turned into trees.
Fertile ground for imagination to grow – Characters, plot twists, wondrous settings, strange combinations of words, in the shaping of a whole world, what an opportunity for imagination to be celebrated and swell. The rendering of the everyday into story however you do it, whether it's fantastical or ordinary, is an act of perception and imagination. This imaginative space allows growth that starts on the page but can permeate the rest of life, allowing us to see and live creatively. From my experience the freedom to play, the agency to go with my intuition and instinct is good fun. The possibility of becoming absorbed in the magic of lacing reality and myth is a joy, one I heartily commend to you. With reference to the climate crisis, imagination will be vital to finding a way to live in a new reality and generate needed solutions to problems as they come thick and fast. These solutions will be structural and technological but also vitally, they will be cultural. Culture, where story, words, and myth create change. It is why I love Word Forest, it is the product of imagining a viable future, and it is active in the ushering of this future into reality. After all we have to try, we have to imagine and we have to enter the flow.
