EXERCISE

Focus inwards

Become still. Let your breathing settle. Take your awareness inwards. What is your life like at this moment? As you consider this question, allow an image to emerge. Take your time. Let the image develop and reveal itself.

• What particular aspect of your life do you think this image represents? How do you feel about it?
• When you have finished exploring this image, draw it. Sit with it a while and get to know it even better. Give it a name.
• Would you like to change the image in any way? If so, make those changes.
• How do you feel about the image now?

Tune in physically

• Allow one hand to explore the other – slowly, carefully, as though it were an unfamiliar object. Notice the temperature, the texture, the different shapes.
• Which hand is doing the exploring? How does it feel in that exploring role?
• Transfer your attention now to the hand that is being explored. How does that feel? Focus on those feelings about being explored.
• Change the roles over. How does each hand feel now?
• If your right hand had a voice, what would it sound like? What would it say?
• Give your left hand a voice. What sort of voice is it? What does it say?
• Let your hands talk to each other for a while.
• Open your eyes. Record your experiences.

Did it feel strange to focus on yourself in that way? Some people find it makes them uneasy at first. They may even find themselves getting angry.

Whatever your reaction to these tuning-in exercises, do persevere. Focusing on the self is an important habit for a writer to develop. Feelings about ourselves often influence our treatment of characters. See what links you notice in this respect after completing the next exercise.

Tune in to your self-image

Do this quickly, with as little thought as possible.

• Write the numbers 1-10 underneath each other ‘shopping list’ style.
• Beside each number write one word which describes you.
• Put this list aside and forget it by doing something else for ten minutes. - 10 minute break -
• Now, on a fresh sheet of paper, write the numbers 1-10 again.
• With your other hand write ten words which describe you.
• Compare the two lists.

What did you discover in comparing lists? Were some words positive and some negative? Did you contradict yourself, even in the same list? Did the lists reflect different, perhaps contradictory, aspects of your personality?

Tune in to an internal dialogue

• Writing with each hand in turn, set up a dialogue about yourself.
• Ask questions about any aspects of your life that have been puzzling or annoying you. Let one hand ask and the other one answer.

Discover the critic within

Writing with the non-dominant hand, as we did in the last two exercises, puts us in the ‘child place’. It can bring up feelings of vulnerability and frustration, making us impatient with ourselves. We may find ourselves thinking that exercises like this are just gimmicks or tricks which cannot produce anything ‘truly creative’. Such reactions are often due to unhelpful messages we received about ourselves in childhood – messages which have stuck and which cause us to criticise ourselves today.

Once we recognise these ‘old tapes’ for what they are, we can learn to turn them off. ‘No thank you.’ ‘What’s your problem?’ or simply ‘Shut up!’ are some of the more polite ways of dealing with these internal voices. Whose voices are they? If you can trace such messages to a specific individual or individuals, going back in your imagination and delivering the ‘shut up’ message personally can be a very liberating experience.

Bypass the critic

The physical difficulty of writing with the non-dominant hand, distracts us from the words themselves. It is therefore a good way to bypass our internal critic. In doing this we free ourselves to rediscover the spontaneous creativity of childhood, and surprise ourselves with the results. Word association activities also enable us to bypass the critic, provided we allow ourselves to let go and write whatever comes into our heads. The two word-association exercises which follow, are useful tools at any stage in the writing process. In this case we will be using them as another way of tuning in to ourselves.