Happy 2010, all!
Here’s a short list of what’s coming for me/writing ourselves whole for the first part of the year — starting next week!
Tag Archives: writing ourselves whole
Writing Ourselves Whole – early 2010 schedule!
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Tagged AWA, bay area, Body Heat, san francisco, sexual trauma, sexuality, writing ourselves whole, writing workshops
get brave
text says: "be brave!"
(from some visioning for 2010: I’d like to post more consistently here at the writingourselveswhole blog, and one topic I want to communicate about is this process I’m entering around growing the workshops into something more like a nonprofit. I never saw myself as someone who would start an org, and have a lot of ‘inner critic’ stuff coming up about these new steps. I want to be transparent with these voices, with my response to ’em, and more…)
Remember that writing prompt, “If I were brave, I would…”? Here’s one of my writes in response:
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Tagged growth, organization, visioning, writing ourselves whole
12/17: Holiday Dirt: fecund new erotica! A benefit for writing ourselves whole…
Please help to spread the word! xoxoxo
Writing Ourselves Whole presents
~Holiday Dirt: fecund new erotica~
a benefit reading and celebration!
With special guest Carol Queen!
Featuring Alex Cafarelli, Lou Vaile, Amy Butcher, Renee Garcia, Jenn Meissonnier, Blyth Barnow and Jess Katz!
Burlesque! Sweet treats! Chapbooks!
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Tagged benefits, center for sex and culture, community, creativity, declaring our erotic, erotic writing, readings, survivors, thanks, writing ourselves whole
thinking about the narrator
As a certified Amherst Writers and Artists workshop facilitator, I use this structure for all of my writing workshops:
1) keep all writing offered in the workshops confidential
2) offer exercises as suggestions
3) remind folks that sharing is optional
4) respond to all writing as though it’s fiction and with what we liked/found strong
Now, the Writing Ourselves Whole workshops that I facilitate (survivors writing workshops and erotic writing workshops) often end up, at least for many (but not all!) participants, being ‘life writing’ opportunities workshops, where the writing is a telling of our own stories, getting into that thick truth of the everyday stories we exist within.
As a facilitator (and as a writer) I am interested in making/having opportunities for us to tell the whole truth(s) and so at first when I am going through the Amherst Writers and Artists (AWA) practices with a new group, I describe the way the method holds space for all this openness: you get to write whatever you want here because we keep it all confidential, and you get to do the exercise or not do the exercise whatever you want, you can even write about how much you hate the exercise and you can read it or not and if you read we only say what we like and what’s strong…
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Tagged AWA, fiction, transformative writing, writing ourselves whole, writing process
Prompt for a Monday…
Give yourself 15 minutes.
Grab a notebook, step away from the computer. Take yourself outside, or at least close to a window. Think of an unfinished conversation — from this morning, from this weekend, from last year.
Could be an conversation between a couple characters you’re working with! Let yourself go back there, dive into the dialogue, beginning with what you wanted to say…
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Tagged prompts, writing ourselves whole
Prompt for a Tuesday: Conversation among our “selves”
It’s Tuesday, and I dunno about you, but I am already well into my week, and the “self” that I am on the weekends feels further and further away by the minute.
Here’s a prompt for this morning:
Take a few moments and write down all the “selves” you are in your life right now (or maybe create this list for a character you’re working with!). (For instance, my list might include: commuter, database flunky, writer, dreamer, coffee addict, etc.)
Let yourself notice which two of your “selves” take most of your time right now, or are otherwise calling your writerly attention, and let them talk with one another for at least 15 mins…
‘Resurrecting’ survivor voices
One of the pieces of “survivor” identity that I wrangle with is this idea that we must “recover” our voices. I mean the notion that our voices are lost, have been snatched away from us.
The literal truth for most of us is that our voices were always here – and yet swallowing this concept of “lost voice” (en)forces a deep body collusion with the prevailing myths and metaphors of those in power. We internalize the idea that we’re silenced in order, I think, to break free of the reality in fact that we are/were ignored. That there are those who heard what we said, and then just turned their faces away from ours.
I spent years believing that I was silenced, that I had no voice. The fact is that I was unheard–an important distinction. As is true for most kids, I learned not to tell my complete truth while I was growing up, and then, and, like many millions of children around the world, I was trained in secrecy by a stepfather/rapist who took my (en)forced silence as his birthright, and used it as a weapon against me. How do we who are survivors of abuse (sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, psychological abuse) tell our truths in a culture that doesn’t want to really hear people’s words and meanings? We are not heard by abusers who demand a silence they can interpret as “Yes.” We are not heard by a patriarchal, capitalist society that demands our silence so they can overlay our lives with their image of us. We are not heard by a government that usurps women’s tears in order to justify the killing of other women’s sons and daughters.
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Tagged AWA, expressive arts, sexual abuse, silences, survivors, voice, writing ourselves whole, writing workshops
Listing: one more of the tricks of the “trade”
I had such a great experience writing in response to the Arts and Healing network interview questions over the last several months — and I was also, finally, motivated to regularly update this blog.
So, at 6:30am while I was working on my morning pages, I jotted down some more questions I’d like to answer (or begin to answer!) about my work, the Writing Ourselves Whole workshops, the uses of art, and more…
It ends up tricking me into posting more regularly — we’ve got to do what we determine will work to get us around our blocks and internalized naysayers, don’t we?
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Tagged Arts and Healing Network, cognitive science, expressive arts, transformative writing, writing ourselves whole
Podcast with Arts and Healing Network is up!
The podcast that Britt Bravo and I recorded back in Nov is up on the Arts and Healing Network! Just before I got on the road to head down to LA for Thanksgiving, Britt and I talked transformative writing, writing as a healing practice, expressive arts, erotic writing for survivors of sexual trauma, Pat Schneider‘s Amherst Writers and Artists workshop method, and more!
Of course, as always, I’d love to hear your thoughts and reactions? What did I leave out? What’s true for you about these topics?
Jen Cross of Writing Ourselves Whole on the Arts and Healing Podcast http://artheals.libsyn.com/
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Tagged Arts and Healing Network, AWA, expressive arts, podcast, writing ourselves whole