Elliott_BR_2

Barry Lane's Writing as a Road to Self-Discovery is one of the "books primarily about personal writing for adults" Nat mentioned along with Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones, as sharing space in the book report library with those focused more on teaching writing to kids. This one's not so much about teaching writing techniques as it is about how we can use writing to find out about ourselves.

I was drawn into this book by the examples Lane gives of the work he's done with writing in prisons. This neutralized the (probably unfair) assumptions I usually make about self-help books: that they're written for people who have their share of the good things America has to offer, and who would benefit more by doing something to redistribute the wealth of the world than sitting around fussing over their personal problems. I just read the book through, without doing any of the exercises, but when I look at this paragraph I see I've been influenced enough by what I read to ask: where did this come from? What's my core memory that makes this such a charged issue for me?

He uses examples from his own life and from the students in his classes to illustrate the three stages he sees this work taking: Remembering "writing techniques to help you dig up old memories and help you understand the hidden meanings of the past", Reframing "Techniques for using your writing to reflect on memories, make connections, develop new perceptions, and explore your power of creative critical thinking" and Reexperiencing "Techniques for tapping hidden powers of recollection and reflection in our writing and our lives."

I was most interested in the idea that the stories we tell (or write) share a repeated pattern, a core story, that we can discover by writing them down. The writing prompts in this book are called "triggers," and the ones in this section are designed to lead us to this theme. "Try finishing this sentence, 'My stories are all about?'" or "Write about two times you were scared. Look for a connection. Can you detect a core story?"

I still don't see myself taking the time to do this work quite yet. I haven't re-planted my chard and carrots, and it's almost July! But I'm more intrigued than I thought I would be.