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Writing A Letter the old fashioned way can help release writers block

I have a confession to make. I have been fighting writers block for quite awhile now.  When I sit down to write, it feels as if my fingers are no longer attached to my hand, they just type on their own. It has felt as if there are no feelings or thoughts flowing from my brain and down through my fingers and onto the keyboard.  So early last week, as  I was typing an email to a friend, I suddenly thought about how much typing has dominated my life.  I suddenly felt a longing for my childhood days when I was writing a letter to a pen-pal in Yugoslavia, or to my brother’s friend who was serving in Viet Nam. I thought about the airmail stamp, of licking it and putting it on the airmail envelope then dropping the letter into the mailbox.  And then I thought about the the time I wrote a story in the sixth grade when I felt proud of my penmanship, and my wild imagination that took me to the planet X where I flew an X-15 rocket around the planet to the far side and saved the planet from destruction.  My inspiration back then was a brand new television show called Star Trek, and another show in which the Robinson Family continued to be “Lost in Space.”

So as I finished typing the email to my friend and clicked send, I vowed it would be my last personal email for one week.  For me, typing a letter has become a detachment from everything that is important to me.  In that moment I suddenly longed for the act of  writing. For my own sanity, I needed to get back to basics. I needed to hold a pen in my hand, put it to paper and form the letters that make the words to convey my feelings and thoughts to the recipient of my letter.

I posted my intentions to my wall on facebook. I made a declaration that for one week, my response to everyone who sends me personal emails will be a hand written letter from me.  “Yes, it will take longer”, I stated, “but I need to get in touch with my writer self again.”   I also requested they also include their mailing address, just to make sure I had the updated information.

Five of my friends responded to my post, sounding rather excited about receiving something in the mail that wasn’t a bill. When I sat down to write the first letter, I thought, “Why not encourage others to hand-write a letter as well?”  So I did.  In each letter I wrote, I included a blank stamped envelope on which I put their name and address in the return address corner. I asked them, in the letter, to use that envelope to hand-write a letter to someone they care about and include a blank stamped envelope in their letter, asking their  friend to do the same thing.  My dream is to get the whole country to hand-write one short letter. The cost is one stamp, two envelopes, and the paper on which to write their letter.  (No, I don’t work for the post office.) After this one week of hand-writing letters, I feel better.  I feel like I have reclaimed the writer within.  I found the part of me that had moved out of the way for the sake of technology.  For me, this past week has been a rebirth.

I know there are probably many of you shaking your head and saying, “What the heck is the big deal? I can type my feelings just as well as I can write them!”.  Perhaps others of you are stuck in a writer’s block mode right now, struggling to get in touch with the act of writing again. Why not try hand-writing a letter to a friend. You may find yourself experiencing an “aha” moment (along with a little writer’s cramp) as you put your pen to paper and discover that writing a letter for old time’s sake, is just what you needed to help you move forward with your story or poem. Write a letter to a friend about the first letter you ever wrote. How old were you when you wrote it? To whom was it written?  What was going on in your life at the time that you couldn’t wait to write the letter and tell that person all about i?

Have Fun!

Until next time,

Walk in beauty, write life with passion!

Did you ever have a pen pal?

What country did he or she live in?

Have you ever written a fan letter?

Writing Away The Demons by Dr. Sherry Reiter

In her book Writing Away The Demons: Stories of Creative Coping through Transformative Writing, Dr. Sherry Reiter and contributors provide personal accounts of healing their lives through the use of journal-writing and poem-making. Dr. Reiter says of her book Writing Away The Demons, that it “is a book that opens the heart and the reader becomes both witness and participant, riveted and educated by the stories”, all of which are stories of creative coping, some who used writing to heal on their own, others who experienced the healing power of writing with the help of a therapist.

It doesn’t matter whether you are a therapist in search of a valuable resource for yourself and your clients, or a person in search of your own healing process through writing, this book is a celebration of courage through adversity.  It explores writing as a tool for psychological survival, a way of creating meaning, coping with feelings of helplessness, and reconciling personal conflict.

I found this book to be informative, enlightening, and inspiring. Those who contributed their stories come from all walks of life and adverse circumstances.  From alcoholism to domestic violence, to battle fatigue, these stories will encourage and bring hope to any reader as well as provide insights and vignettes for therapists to draw upon in client sessions.

About the Author: Sherry Reiter, PhD., is a clinical social worker and registered poetry therapist. She is a mentor, training poetry therapists at The Creative “Righting” Center in New York. She is also the coordinator of the Poets-Behind-Bars program, a writing program for inmates of the Indiana State Maximum Security Prison, and teaches at Touro College and Hofstra University.

The book sells for $14.95 plus shipping and is available through www.writingawaythedemons.com, Amazon.com and, northstarpress.com.

Throughout history, during times of great oppression, political turmoil and  natural catastrophes, poetry has found its way into the writing and story-telling culture in every country, and every language known to human kind.  In the wake of the terrorist attacks of  September 11, 2001, among my friends, writers groups, and writing organizations, there was a surge in poem-making.  People needing to express their shock and grief over the loss and trauma, posted poetry on websites, wrote it on walls, made signs, or sent a poem to someone they loved.  After keeping my eyes glued to the television in disbelief for two-and-a-half days, I took a drive to the top of a mountain, sat on a rock and wrote for a couple of hours.  I wrote of my shock, disbelief, and anger that American life as I had known it, was now gone. The blind trust in permanent safety disappeared.  Writing my poetry was the only way I seemed to be able to process and try to make sense out of everything.

Today,  write a poem of  healing. Write a poem of remembrance. Write a poem of encouragement to others.  It does not have to rhyme, have rhythm or rules.  Let your voice be heard in your written words today.  If you like, post your poem (under 15 lines please) in the comments below.

Until Next time,

May you walk in beauty, write life with passion!

Here are a few ideas to help get your creative juices flowing for the weekend. There are more to books than one might think so for your Friday writing warm up today, sit down in front of your bookshelf and write down the names of the first ten books on your shelf.  If by some strange chance, you don’t have books, you can do it with old Record album titles, CD’s or movie titles.  Write a story incorporating each title into the story in some way.

I’ve provided my own list below for you to use if you prefer (I threw in a few extras in case you need them) :

The Rubayyat of Omar Khayyam, If you want to Write, The Four Agreements, Vedic Astrology Simply Put, The Complete Stress Management Book, Out of Africa, Listening Woman, Don’t Get Mad Get Funny, What Color Is Your Parachute, The Princes of Ireland, Toxic Faith, The How To Herb Book, World Poetry.

A variation on the above exercise is an idea I gleaned from a face-book note circulating around.  Just grab the first book you come to.  Don’t look for one, don’t pick one out, just grab one. Turn to a certain page number, for the purposes of this exercise I will just say turn to page 55. Find the second paragraph on the page and copy the third line down in the paragraph. Begin your story with that line.

If the first two don’t tickle your fancy, here’s a third idea for you. Turn to the table of contents in a book and write down the titles of the chapters.  You can either skip around, write them in order, or use every other one. After making your list, incorporate them into a story.  May the creativity flow!

Have a good weekend. Remember writing can be fun.

Until Next Time,

Walk in Beauty, Write Life With Passion!

Every year in November hundreds of writers participate in the NanoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) challenge. The idea is to write a 50,000 word novel in thirty days. According to the website, the idea is to allow yourself to write without concern about whether it’s for publication or not.  The focus is on the quantity instead of  the quality.  You don’t have to be concerned with the continual tweaking and editing along the way; just get it down on paper. It’s a reversal from the norm.

Borrowing from this idea, I suggest we Tucson poets create a similar writing challenge.  Let’s spend this month writing poetry every day. Don’t be concerned about the number of words,  just write two poems, or one 100 word prose, every day for thirty one days. You’ll have sixty two poems by the end of a month. That’s  enough to create your own chapbook or jump start your own poetry blog.  If you’re willing to take the challenge, post a comment below to let me know you’re starting.

Remember, the idea is to write without worrying about “crafting” the poems. The only rule I have for now (I may think of another one or two later) is that you choose either prose or poetry and stick with it for the entire month.  At the end of your thirty one days let me know how it went.  I’d love to know how you liked the challenge?  There aren’t any entry fees or prizes involved. This is strictly for the fun of it.

So, any  takers?

Until next time, walk in beauty, write life with passion!

I have a plaque on my desk with the following message, “Please don’t clean my desk, you’ll mess up my system.”  That’s putting it mildly. My desk sometimes looks like a tornado came through; papers piled high, books on top of the papers, envelopes, pens, pencils and any other doo-dads that I can’t find another place for. During times like that I think I could blame the mess on…yeah that’s it, I’ll blame it on all the Superman episodes and movies with writers in them that I watched back in the late fifties and early sixties when I was a kid. You know the ones where everyone is plunking away on a typewriter, phones are ringing, people talking and shouting and then someone walks in and yells, “Stop the presses!” A cacophony of sound that I romanticized and transformed into what I thought the writers life should look and be like.

Then there were the movies that portrayed the life of writers as a solitary, lonely, cigarette-smoking and alcohol drinking nightmare. It seemed as if the writer was always drinking and smoking, and had one great novel, but none since that time. He (it was always a “he” back then) was so steeped in writer’s block that the publisher was going to drop him, at the same time the wife was leaving and divorcing him.

Hollywood began to move away from some of the traditional stereotypes with movies like Romancing the Stone, Throw Mama From the Train, and Under The Tuscan Sun. It seems that with those movies, a new image of writers began to emerge.  Though still portrayed as a solitary profession, the writing life has become romanticized and idealized as one full of adventure and intrigue.

What comes to mind when someone says the words “living a writer’s life”?  I think the interpretations can be just as individual as a person’s fingerprints.  Some of you writers starting out will imagine living the writer’s life as sitting in a penthouse plunking out the next great American novel, while others imagine it to be seclusion in a mountain cabin writing a poem every day for months on end. And still others see themselves on a guest speaking tour promoting their book, while another group of writers imagine themselves as the next Bob Woodward, breaking a big news story and receiving the accolades that go with it.  Some writers, though a chosen few, write all day, every day, while others have different jobs and responsibilities, and only write for the fun of it.

Regardless of what our motivations are, or what we think the writers life should be like, we writers have two things in common: we love to write and we have something to say and writing is how we say it.  I would like to think it is a passion for the craft, and the belief that what we do as writers can make a difference, that binds us together as a community of writers and keeps us going during the lean times.

I have often thought about creating a bumper sticker (maybe there already is one somewhere) that says, “I’d rather be writing,” because that’s how we writers are.  Aren’t we? What does the writer’s life mean to you?

Just something to think about today.

Until next time,

Walk in beauty, write life with passion!

I’ve had conversations with other poets recently about whether a poem should be written in first person using I, you, and we, as opposed to he, she, and they.  All I can really tell you is “it’s a matter of personal preference and what the poet wants to relay to the reader.”  Personally, I don’t like to read an I, you, we poem that creates the feeling that I’m butting into someone’s private conversation.  As a reader, I am not privy to the relationship between the I and the you.  On the same note however, there are times when using the first person form fits well in a poem, but (and this is a big BUT) it has to be crafted in such a way that the reader is not left scratching their head and saying, what was that all about? This is not to say I haven’t written I, you and we poems before.  But when I do, they are usually not intended to be read in public. On the rare occasions when I do read them publicly, I feel like I have to preface the reading with a long drawn out explanation to the audience so they’ll really “get it” when I read the poem.

Writing a poem in a third person he, she, and they form allows the poet to share the same perspective as the reader.  It creates a narrative style that allows the reader an opportunity to enlist imaginative possibilities about who the he, she and they are.

For a writing exercise today find (or write) a poem in the first person and read it out loud. Once done, read it again, substituting the I, you and we with a he, she and they.  Finally, rewrite it in the third person.

Pay attention to your own reactions to the difference, if any.  Think and write about any differences in your perception and interpretation of the poem?  Most importantly, enjoy your writing session.
Just something to think about today.

Until next time,

Walk in beauty, write life with passion!

The reasons for writing do not  always involve publishing a novel about imaginative characters on a quest, a poem about the clouds, or instructions on how to build a new house.  For many people there are emotional as well as physical benefits to journal writing and poem-making.  For example, writing out your thoughts and feelings of grief in a journal or as a poem can help bring clarity to the confusion of loss. It can also help release the intensity of emotional pain and foster the feelings of putting life into perspective.  The physical act of writing can help bring subconscious thoughts and feelings  to the surface, and the journal itself becomes a record of one’s emotional journey, helping to gauge the progress made through a difficult time.

Many doctors and therapists prescribe journal writing as part of a patient’s treatment program.  For some patients, writing about feelings that are difficult to talk about can help them feel heard.  In other words, writing provides a bridge between their feelings and the ability to speak about them. Biblio/poetry therapists use literature and poetry as a springboard to introduce conversation about emotionally-charged subjects, then have the client write a poem or journal entry based on the discussion.

Even though many of the emotional benefits of writing are subjective (reported by the writers themselves) there is quantitative scientific research to prove that there are physiological benefits to the act of writing.  Research on writing, and its ability to help a person heal emotionally and physically, has been taking place over the past several decades. Psychologist James Pennebaker, PhD. at the University of Texas in Austin, has conducted repeatable studies showing  that positive physiological changes occur in the body when a subject writes about a personal trauma.  According to a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association (April 14, 1999) patients with asthma or rheumatoid arthritis who wrote about the most stressful experiences in their lives experienced a reduction in symptoms.  In this study, conducted by Joshua M. Smyth, Ph.D. and colleagues, over a hundred patients with asthma or rheumatoid arthritis were asked to “write either about the most stressful event of their lives or emotionally neutral topics (the control intervention).  The researchers found that patients with mild to moderately severe asthma or rheumatoid arthritis who wrote about traumatic life experiences had clinically relevant changes in health status after four months compared to those in the control group.” (JAMA 1999)

There are a growing number of hospitals, like Shands Hospital in Gainesville, Florida, as well as cancer treatment centers and other medical facilities in the U.S., that are including writing programs as an additonal part of their patient care plans.  Though writing may not be a cure-all to what ails you, the scientific evidence is mounting that the benefits outweigh the reasons not to use it as a tool in the healing process.

Until next time,

Walk in beauty, write life with passion!

When the 4th of July rolls around every year, I take pause to think about the writers who crafted the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. These are the most important documents in the history of our country and I often think about the dangers these writers must have faced as they wrote and spoke out against the oppression of the King.  I think about the blood price thousands of men and women have paid to help us keep our freedom to write and speak our minds without retribution.  I am grateful today and every day for this freedom.

As we celebrate our country’s birthday today, let’s not forget that there are still writers in the world who, under the control and censorship of oppressive governments, take great risks to put their pen to paper.  I encourage all writers here to pause for a moment of gratitude while holding in their thoughts the writers of the world who speak the truth in the midst of oppressive societies.  After all, aren’t our freedoms the product of such writers?

Until next time,

Walk in beauty, write life with passion!

I am a big fan of  the beat poets.  I know they are not the first in history to influence a society, nor will they be the last.  However, writers and poets like Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Alan Ginsberg, helped give birth to a societal paradigm shift that lasted more than a decade.  These and other Beat poets and writers of the late 1950’s pushed the boundaries of personal morality, inspiring others as they challenged the first amendment right to free speech.  Beats helped change traditional views on poetry and literature in our society.  They met in coffeehouses, homes and anywhere else they could, reciting poetry that didn’t rhyme, using bongos and other instruments as accompaniment.  They wrote their poetry on controversial topics like sex and religion and took great personal and professional risks in their stand against social prejudices, war, and government policies.  The Beats ushered in the 1960’s, a decade that challenged writers to push the literary boundaries, inspire the masses and encourage change by speaking out.  Their adventurous literary rebellion gave rise to the movement toward a “doing your own thing” and “if it feels good do it” generation.  Writers began to produce more provocative novels, movies began to push the limits in their subject matter, and poets and musicians like Bob Dylan, became active voices for thousands of teens and twenties who had become tired of the constraints of tradition.  It seems to me that during the late 50’s and throughout the 1960’s, the pen, once again in history, became mightier than the sword.

Don’t you think that during these difficult economic times in our country it is important to believe that we as writers, like so many before us, can challenge apathy, raise awareness, entertain and inspire another generation with the power of the pen?  Better yet, don’t just believe it, do it.