CASE STUDIES

When Sheila managed to free some days for writing, she was surprised at how enjoyable it was and at how easily it flowed, using these methods. She then felt that her suspicions about putting it off in case she was unable to do it well enough were confirmed. She concluded that the BBC’s decision not to perform her play probably affected her confidence more than she realised. Casting the producer in question as her ‘inner critic’ and conducting an inner dialogue with her, helped Sheila to move on. Using these techniques over a number of weeks helped her to rediscover playfulness and a sheer joy in writing that she had not felt for some time.

As for David, after getting some intriguing results from Word Webs and successfully using a Word Honeycomb to discover ‘whodunit’, he was very pleased that he had not given up. He admitted that he had identified a particularly scathing English teacher as one of the ‘voices’ of his inner critic and that this had motivated him to persevere ‘and jolly well show him’!