When I started this blog, I remember worrying about running out of topics.  I worked from a list that I kept adding to each week.  But after just a few months of posting, I quickly found it more enjoyable to come up with my topics spontaneously, from listening to what people around me or my own mind was wrestling with that week.  After two years of weekly posts, I am so pleased that I have never missed one or felt that is was a burden.  I am really enjoying this platform and am so thankful for your time in reading it.  But I am going to make  change.  I love to write and have some ideas for some other pieces that I haven’t had time for, so I’m going to shift to writing in this blog every other week.  So in honor of this change, I’m going to invite you to do some of your own writing and see what you might discover.

It makes me angry at how school teaches most people to hate writing and dismiss it.  Watching my daughters write their “compare and contrast” essays, struggle with MLA notation, and be hammered with the search for topic sentences, it sometimes breaks my heart to see them become alienated from their own voice.  I know it is vital to learn to write formal essays, but I wish an English teacher would sometimes have them write an assignment that can teach them how to use writing as I have come to love it, to discover what they think and feel, to expand on a creative idea, or to just simply play.  I use writing personally to help me figure out what is going on with me, and if I can get a client to trust that I’m not going to grade their work, I use it effectively with them as well.  By putting feelings into words, you can achieve clarity and find a release. In the end, this helps us make better choices about what we really want to do or say to someone.

At a writing workshop I went to almost ten years ago, the instructor had us create two characters for ourselves.  The first was our inner critic.  We gave a name and a look to our inner critic, and thanked it for its help in editing and improving our work.  But then we asked our inner critic to step aside so that we could identify our muse.  We also gave him or her a name and identity, the part of ourselves that is creative and reckless and has a lot to say once the critic is put on hold.  This was a huge turning point for me.  Once I could begin to let myself write freely, I discovered the complete joy of letting my muse take over.  I also discovered the great paradox in writing:  On the one hand I am often completely surprised what comes out on paper if I allow it to flow, as if someone else had taken over, but at the same time, I am in complete control.  I can kill off a character, change an ending, be overbearing or be nakedly vulnerable,  I get to decide what I say, who gets to say it (I love writing as a male character), and who gets to read it.

If you’re like most people, getting started is the hardest part.  So here are a few ideas that help.  Let your muse pick out a beautiful journal.  Let him or her do some free writing in your journal each day, just ten minutes of uninterrupted writing to let it flow.  Or start with a “jump line,” such as “My father’s hands” or “When the sun goes down…”   If you google jump lines you will find a long list of great ones.  A set of jump lines I love to use with people I work with is, on one side of the page write “Want I want to tell you is…” and then after writing for ten minutes, turn over the page and write ten minutes more to “What I don’t want to tell you is…:”  It’s amazing what comes up!  Some other ideas are writing letters (you never have to send) to yourself, to a part of you, a younger you, or to someone from the past or future.  You can also let yourself write about a fantasy or rewrite the ending to a scary dream.

There is a freedom in writing if you can surrender to it.  But it does take some courage to find your muse; a part of you that wants to get out, be heard, dig deeper, wonder, shout, or try something on.  They say the pen is mightier than the sword.  So take a chance and meet your muse.  Together you can discover how powerful you can be!

See you in two weeks!