Mslexia

Mslexia, the magazine for women who write | www.mslexia.co.uk

Inspirations

WRITING YOUR SELF

Hayfields or horse-dung

Roselle Angwin explores the unconscious and turns your life into literature

‘Being a writer is a whole way of life,’ says Natalie Goldberg in 1991’s Wild Mind, ‘a way of seeing, thinking, being.’

In my columns so far I’ve addressed what I consider to be core practice for a writer: finding ways to open conduits from the fertile life of the subconscious realm into the conscious mind, and finding starting points for making use of the flow of images, memories, associations and feelings that arise and are captured in ‘stream-of-consciousness’ writing.

I want to deepen this practice a little by including close observation as an exercise. Paying attention – really paying attention – is key to writing of any kind whether it be poetry, fiction, nonfiction, scriptwriting. Much of the work I do with others, whether they are schoolchildren or adults, takes place outside. I ask people to register and record their sensory response with close attention to the environment around them, and then to focus on the relationship they make with what they perceive – in other words, to the flow between inner and outer worlds.

Something I stress is the way we overlook certain senses in favour of our eyes, or our ears. So I also ask people to relate consciously and singly via each sense (including taste, where appropriate): so often we forget the potency of smell, or the messages received via the haptic. There’s a certain Zen discipline in this – when we’re fingertipping the moss, describing the exact shade of the first bluebell, the feel of bare feet on cool sand or hot tarmac, noticing the distant roar of traffic, sinking teeth into a crisp apple, catching a whiff of hayfields or horse-dung – we’re doing it with all of ourselves, bringing everything to this moment, this now.

Clearly, close observation includes observation of our own species, too – invaluable for fiction writers. More on that another time; for now I want to ask you to find a place, preferably outside, where there is plenty of foreground detail but where you can also see the horizon.

You’ll see that in one of the five stages below I also invite imagination and/or memory. This exercise is most effective if you keep your responses brief and vivid – just a few lines each time, and stay with the present tense. Please feel free to be poetic! Spend some time noticing, and then jot down, what you perceive in the environment in front of you in the:

1. Foreground – a spread of a few metres
2. Middle distance – not close enough to be aware of much detail
3. Horizon
4. Over the horizon
5. Very close up and detailed – within centimetres or fewer: an insect, a piece of lichen, a mark or stain, your thumbtip.

Which of these proved easy, and which more challenging? If you would like to, it might also prove fruitful to apply this template separately to your inner, or personal, life. Is there a way then to bring the two together?

Reference: Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg (Rider, 1991)

ROSELLE ANGWIN is a writer, poet and painter, and runs the Fire in the Head creative writing programme, which now also includes a novel-writing correspondence course. She’s interested in the connections between creativity and well-being, and between inner and outer landscapes. She is the author of Writing the Bright Moment (Fire in the Head, 2005), and Looking For Icarus (bluechrome, 2005). Her novel Imago will be published in November.

This feature has been selected from the Mslexia archive. For the latest on the writing world, publishing and creativity subscribe now. To sample more Mslexia features or to find out about the latest issue click here.

Go to:
Submit
New Writing

From Issue 38 ◊ Jul/Aug/Sep 2008

CAUTION:

• The exercises in this feature can access memories and feelings that may be challenging or painful. Before you start, do ensure you have supportive friends or family members to talk to if need be.