Announcing a fun, collaborative project called "Writing As Breathing: How Writing Changes Me" hosted by Susan Kuenzi
Exploring what writing means to you personally, and how writing has played a role in your growth and healing.
In honor of our soon to happen voyage to Alaska, I'm reading some James Michener quotes.
If you enjoy writing, please join us for a fun, interactive look at how writing has changed you, and what writing means to you.
I’m calling this collaborative project:
“Writing as Breathing:
How Writing Changes Me.”
Later in this article, you’ll find a series of questions that you might enjoy reflecting on. You can use these questions as springboards for articles, or you can interact with this theme in other ways.
We’ll offer informal ways to participate in this discussion (through comments or a Thread I’ll be initiating in the coming weeks). I also thought some of you might enjoy the chance to submit your own articles that relate to this meaningful topic.
Please consider this article to be a call for submissions on this theme. I’d like to receive your submissions by the last day of August 2024. Then we’ll feature links to your submissions based on your Substack articles, or highlight some favorite submissions or comments in a little series I’ll create this fall.
I’m doing this just as a fun way to inspire discussion about how this writing life has meant something special to you, and perhaps how you’ve found words healing.
Many years ago, a gracious black woman named Virginia led a woman’s retreat I attended. She grabbed my hand and prayed over me when I asked her if she thought God would allow me to serve Him. Her kind words of blessing foreshadowed my eventual career in writing and counseling: she told me someday, I would HEAL WITH WORDS.
Below, you’ll find a series of questions that I’ve created to whet your whistle and inspire your thoughts on this theme. I’d love to read your thoughts on any of these questions that I pose below, or hear your own spin on this theme. After we return from Alaska, I’ll be starting a Thread for this project where you can join in on a (hopefully) lively discussion with others. Watch for this Thread later in July. If you’ve written articles on this topic that fit the theme already, feel free to send me a link so I can take a look.
This project is meant to be fairly informal, and to provide an enjoyable avenue to connect with other Substack writers, and to hear their stories and perspectives around the theme of writing.
I’d like you to consider this project “a virtual campfire.” Come join us around the fire, where you can open your heart and swap stories with beloved friends and strangers who join you in warming your writing fingers around the flames (while dodging the campfire smoke that always seems to make a few people cough and shift positions before heading to their tents, bidding the others goodnight).
Here’s a little back story about my early writing experiences:
Since I first learned to read, and from the time I held a number 2 pencil in my little hands, I have loved words.
I remember neatly writing my private thoughts in a little diary I’d bought with my savings from working on our farm. Words were pure magic to me. In a stoic farm family that never talked much about emotions, the pages provided a refuge for my deepest thoughts and feelings, and I boldly jotted down a few of my hopes and dreams.
But then something invaded this “writing refuge” found within the pages of that light pink diary, shattering my peaceful illusion of privacy. One day my older sister read my diary, and she made fun of my words and emotions. I don’t remember what she said, I only know that I felt so horrified that my special words had been read by someone else without my permission. I felt violated. I felt compelled to do something.
In fact, I dejectedly took that diary out to the rusty burn barrel, my eyes misty and my tender heart wounded.
I lit a bonfire in the barrel (with a few twigs and some rolled up newspapers), and page by page, with tears streaming down my dusty cheeks, I tore out the innards from that pink diary. One by one, I watched the lined pages where my childhood thoughts had been carefully printed, now igniting in the orange flames. The pages curled up as the charred edges met their tragic end, first bursting into a glowing flame before eventually becoming cold gritty grey ashes in the bottom of the burning barrel.
Over the years, writing has provided a very healing outlet for me. My family went through some very traumatic, tough experiences when I was young, and being a verbal processor, I found so much solace in the act of writing down my thoughts. (Although I carefully guarded my diaries from then on, it still took me some years and required some healing before I had the courage to begin to share my writing with others.)
I’m fascinated by the interplay between the words we write, our emotional/inner lives, and even how expressing our stories through words can shake loose something within us. Sometimes we courageously write down some words we have never dared to utter to another human being. Maybe we put those words in a safe and lock it up, or maybe we gradually work up the courage to share our stories with a beloved, trusted friend. Other times, writers labor for months creating a memoir that they hope to share with others. Still other writers find a creative outlet in writing fiction stories, perhaps finding inspiration from someone they have met or even from their own loved ones or their own personal experiences. Some people like to use the Hero’s Journey as a way to pour out their thoughts on the page, giving some form and structure to their narratives.
Whatever your relationship to writing, if you’re reading this, I’d like to invite you to participate in some way in this collaborative project. Here, please allow me to explain a little more:
As I mentioned earlier, I’m calling this fun project "Writing As Breathing: How Writing Changes Me." Over the next few weeks, I’d like to invite you to read this article for a bit of inspiration, and then respond to any of the questions posed to you here.
As someone with a love for listening to the stories of others, I know how we grow simply by sharing our stories and experiences. So in honor of writing as a therapeutic endeavor, I decided to invite other writers here to share from their own hearts and experiences. I’d like to hear more about what writing has meant to you personally. Together, we’ll create an avenue for exploration of this theme.
(NOTE: As I mentioned in previous articles, my background is in the counseling and educational/training field. Along with writing my upcoming book called Tenderly Transformed: Growing and Healing Through Turbulent Times, I’ve been working on mini-course for writers that I have tentatively called “Writing for Healing and Healing for Writers.” Over the years, I have had the pure joy of coaching some other writers. I realize that as humans, writers are vulnerable to things like depression and anxiety, and some writers are still processing unhealed trauma. I recognize the interplay between our emotional wellness and our effectiveness as writers. While this upcoming min-course will be psycho-educational in nature, participants will look at things like imposter syndrome, creative anxiety, and brain science as we consider some tools to help calm the parasympathetic nervous system or to utilize writing as a healing force. The first workshop will be held in October for an organization that’s invited me to facilitate this topic.)
Writing is healing. Writers need to write, just like our lungs need oxygen so we can stay alive.
I’m very intrigued by what writing has meant to you and I’d love to hear more about your writing journey and how that might parallel your inner growth and healing.
I’d love for you to reflect on some questions with me, but first I’d like to share a few quotes by some writers I admire. First, we’ll look at some comments by Ursula K. Le Guin, quoted from the valuable website set up by her foundation:
A Few Words to a Young Writer
Socrates said, “The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.” He wasn't talking about grammar. To misuse language is to use it the way politicians and advertisers do, for profit, without taking responsibility for what the words mean. Language used as a means to get power or make money goes wrong: it lies. Language used as an end in itself, to sing a poem or tell a story, goes right, goes towards the truth.
A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, undated
https://www.ursulakleguin.com/a-few-words-to-a-young-writer#:~:text=A%20writer%20is%20a%20person,well%20they%20strengthen%20their%20souls.
Ursula had a woman obtain a domain name and maintain a great website for her for many years, which the foundation later simplified (see the link above). Here’s a review from that original website, which has been archived to preserve her original legacy recorded in that archived website:
Publishers Weekly: So Far So Good: Final Poems 2014–2018: Reviewed by Peter Milne Greiner
“Her writings and convictions were driven by a big heart—the heart of a poet who knew all too well the difference between miracle and eureka, revelation and revolution.” —PW
24 August 2018
This original website (where the above review appeared) for Ursula K. Le Guin may be found at this link: https://web.archive.org/web/20200918100655/http://www.ursulakleguinarchive.com/UKL_info.html
In response to a question about where she got her ideas, Ursula K. Le Guin had some fun things to say.
Here’s a link to an interview with her in 2000: https://literary-arts.org/archive/ursula-k-le-guin-5/
Here’s a written description that went along with this Literary Arts Podcast which aired this interview. I enjoyed hearing what she had to say about her writing in this interview, and her source for ideas.
Ursula K. Le Guin opens with the question, “Where do you get your ideas from?” and replies with her favorite response, from Harlan Ellison: “He says he gets his ideas from a mail-order house in Schenectady.” Le Guin goes on to seriously address the question, because “unanswerable questions are just what fiction writers like to answer.” She discusses the process of all artists’ work, of the connection between experience and imagination, and the tendency for Americans to prefer realism in their novels and to put genre fiction in the literary ghetto. She warns against the dismissal of fantasy: “People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.” She goes on to explain the importance of reading, and how this virtual experience not only feeds writers’ imaginations, but is also a wholly different experience than viewing stories onscreen. She ends with a profound meditation on the nature of rhythm in the world and the way art breaks down barriers between people. This lecture is transcribed in the Literary Arts anthology The World Split Open (Tin House, 2014).
In honor of our upcoming trip to Alaska, here are a few quotes by another beloved writer, James Michener, whose well loved works included a book about Alaska:
“I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.”
— James A. Michener
Do you relate to the words of James Michener, or the thoughts expressed above by Ursula K. Le Guin? How would you describe the place writing has in your own world?
Here’s another quote for you to reflect upon:
“If your book doesn’t keep you up nights when you are writing it, it won’t keep anyone up nights reading it.” —James A Michener
Where do your most compelling ideas for your writing originate? What’s your inspiration and writing process like?
How does writing help you to process emotions or difficult memories, or even to record joyful experiences?
What does your writing life mean to you personally nowadays? When did you first begin to see yourself as a writer?
Do you ever struggle with imposter sydrome? How do you handle negative self talk or address creative anxiety?
What has helped you to create a more consistent writing life that you enjoy? Or is this an ongoing struggle, or an area you’re exploring?
What tips would you share with others about things that help you learn and grow as a writer?
In what ways has writing been part of your healing, growth and transformation as an individual?
Can you recall a time when your written words have helped to change your personal relationships for the better?
If you’re in my generation, do you have a little stack of of special letters you still treasure?
I still have a basket with letters from my students from China and other countries around the globe. These hand written words from beloved friends have meant more to me than any other gift I’ve ever received. I can’t part with these thin pages of air post missives where friends shared their hearts so beautifully with ballpoint pens.
How does writing help you cultivate a richer spiritual life?
I would like to invite you to share with me some of your thoughts about how writing has helped you heal and grow. Whether you simply share a paragraph or two in the comments of this post, or you write an essay or story that explores this topic, I’d love to hear from you.
How do you view your own skill as a writer? Do you feel like you can legitimately call yourself a writer? Or do you mumble and blush whenever someone asks you what you do, and hesitate to call yourself a “real writer.”
Here’s an encouraging quote for you:
Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.
Do you relate to this quote by James Michener?
“I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter.”
— James A. Michener
I’ll close with two more quotes by the talented James Michener:
“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he’s always doing both.”
— James A. Michener
“Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.”
— James A. Michener
“If a man happens to find himself, he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life.”
— James A. Michener
One last question for you to ponder:
How has writing helped you find yourself?
Watch for further articles or Threads, or start by commenting at this article. This is open to free subscribers, but I’d love it if you’d subscribe so you won’t miss the series as they are released.
Have a great Alaska trip, Susan! When you are back, I'd like to share one of my previous postings on writing, and the feeling of "I must write" ...
https://open.substack.com/pub/susankuenzi/p/affirmation-criticism-and-rejection?r=22wfou&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web This article I wrote earlier relates to our writing experience...how does rejection impact you?