Everything, Everywhere, Write #6 | Word Puzzling
"It is our duty to trust ourselves and our voice, to find our own process."
A column about embracing and nurturing your creative journey daily, allowing for growth and flourishing while releasing guilt and self-doubt.
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Dear Writers,
Below the paywall is the sixth prompt in this series. Continue reading this prompt in its entirety, and gain access to all of our prompts by becoming a paid subscriber. These prompts are meant to be used in any way you wish, but please do not share them with anyone. Some will one day be published or these are currently used in workshops.
—Sherisa
I love jigsaw puzzles. The pieces tumble out and I am confident that everything I need to complete the picture is there. There is no debate on whether the end result is possible. The challenge with a writing life is having that same certainty. And yes, jigsaw puzzles are a part of my writing life. I post the process and learnings from each one on social media, as they require and nurture my creative juices.
A woman interested in my BIPOC writing program asked me what I thought was essential to my writing life. I distilled it into three words. Sanctuary. Voice. Writing Process. These concepts are for me like the border of a puzzle. It gives me a sense of what I am constructing and assures me that everything that is a jumble in the box or my brain will find its way to where it belongs.
Sanctuary is about safety. This includes both your trust in your right to be a writer no matter the inevitable bumps in the journey and people and spaces you can trust. Vulnerability and bravery are essential in a writing life. We require a refuge, a harbor when the storms are battering your spirit or rejecting your submissions to journals, residencies, agents, and publishers. As we change, so do our needs. Being present with yourself is key to making sure you have sanctuary. This may seem easy, but it can be difficult when people or spaces we trusted have failed us. Break-ups are real and can tempt us to isolate ourselves from others. There is a reason some writers succumb to addiction.
“Your writing voice” was this mythical creature just beyond my reach. I thought I already had a voice so it was an odd idea.
You may have heard about “morning pages”, prompts, story arcs, free writing, writing groups, editing, and “write every day”. These are different examples of how you create processes, like when doing a jigsaw puzzle, everyone has an opinion on the “best” way to figure out where the pieces fit. Newsflash: there is no right way. Too bad, really. It would be great if we could plug in the processes others advocate for and then focus on the writing. But it is our writing life. It is our duty to trust ourselves and our voice, to find our own process; accepting that it will change as surely as the tides. Ask others what they do and how it helps them. Read articles and watch videos. Gather data and test it out just as you test the temperature of water before deciding whether it will work for you. I have needed writing groups, conferences, writing partners, and coaches at different times. I include rituals as part of my process. Lighting a candle before writing, ringing a bell, or reading a poem to ground me in my body, heart, and spirit.
Sanctuary and process are the lower parts of the triangle that support the most ineffable of the three concepts. “You must find your writing voice” is what I heard many times as an emerging writer, the way I was told to find all the edge pieces of a puzzle. “Your writing voice” was this mythical creature just beyond my reach. I thought I already had a voice so it was an odd idea. When I looked it up just now, one definition is: “the mixture of vocabulary, tone, point of view, and syntax that makes phrases, sentences, and paragraphs flow in a particular manner”. You can represent multiple voices: that of the narrator and those of individual characters, family members, fantastical beings, and/or objects. My voice was there, just not clearly developed to its full potential. We can be self-conscious (back to the trust issue) or have been colonized to think there is one right voice–which just so happens to not be your own. Voice means figuring out, through practice and valuable feedback, when your writing flows with freedom. Not always and not at the same speed. It is about persistence and consistency.
Word puzzling is more than about finding the right word in a thesaurus, which is where our rational mind goes to try to gain control or to delight in the magic of words. We puzzle out our stories and poems because we care about something enough to weather the storms that makes it hard to hear our voice over the din of others' success. When what was a safe space or person for us to share our craft is dismantled due to egos and a scarcity mentality, we can isolate ourselves on our island. If a precious process that once anchored us is no longer viable due to life’s changing circumstances, we can long for that certainty instead of viewing our lives from a broader view and considering which pieces we can rearrange to open up new possibilities. This act of rearranging and re-committing is inherently creative and essential to our writing lives.
I had thought that writing to the point of a significant product–be it a manuscript, column, essay, or speech–would calm the waves. Not so. I remember someone lending me a CD (look it up if needed) by a writing instructor who introduced me to the dreaded “Ticks” theory that was like opening up another puzzle box. We all have words or short phrases we use too much. Some are filler words like: just, very, always, and so. These would be the “weeds” that grow in between the plants you want to nourish and distract from the symmetry and power of your writing. Others are words that are like barnacles that have gotten stuck to you because you like how they sound or they seem multipurpose. My favorite when writing my memoir was “maneuver”. I was maneuvering my mom’s depression, maneuvering a broken relationship, maneuvering my kids’ educational system, and maneuvering my writing life. My list grew and grew. Passive verbs, unnecessary adjectives, and redundant adverbs. This puzzle was about that trust issue. Trusting that my voice was enough. The ticks were like not seeing the forest for the trees. Early on in my writing journey, an editorial consultant advised me to highlight everything in my manuscript that was an action. I didn’t know then she was stripping away my tick facade (pretense, affectation, mask, veneer). She then suggested I add in what was not highlighted only if the actions needed more context to understand. It would have helped me if she had said something about this exercise was about trusting my voice. It felt harsh at the time in my tender writer’s heart; it was meant to affirm my forest by eliminating non-native species.
Choosing our words is complicated when we overuse our left brain and simple when we use our whole mind, along with our hearts. Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian author, says: “We’re all born with the greatest treasures we’ll ever have in life. One of those treasures is your mind, another is your heart.”
Linda González’ (she/ella) writing and coaching practice is focused on supporting BIPOC to embark on a journey of love and healing for this and future generations. She works with BIPOC writers to claim their voice through a sanctuary program that includes coaching, writing sessions, editing, and craft workshops. She is the author of two books and has published many essays. Breaking Through Your Own Glass Ceiling is based on living a full-hearted life with healing at the core, despite daily inequities. Her award-winning memoir The Cost of Our Lives is a family story of unearthing secrets in search of redemption.
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