Writing Works

A Resource Handbook for Therapeutic Writing Workshops and Activities

Victoria Field, Gillie Bolton, Kate Thompson

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781846425493
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy Counselling
• Index: Psychology

The use of creative writing as a route to personal development is a powerful therapeutic tool - a fact that is recognized in the growing numbers of workshops and writing groups within professional contexts, including clinical, health and criminal justice settings.

Writing Works is a guide for writers or therapists working with groups or individuals and is full of practical advice on everything from the equipment needed to run a session to ideas for themes, all backed up by the theory that underpins the methods explained. Experienced practitioners in the field contribute detailed illuminating accounts of organizing writing workshops for a wide range of different clients, together with examples of their outcomes.

This book will be an invaluable start-up reference for arts therapists and professionals working across the health, social care and caring professions, and one that will be referred to again and again.

PART ONE

Writing from Without

CHAPTER 1

Warming Up and Working Together

Edited by Kate Thompson

Beginnings are exciting, shot through with the adrenaline of the new and fuelled by expectation. They are also frightening and anxiety provoking and full of uncertainty, states which we go to great lengths to avoid. They are both the agent and product of change and change is, by its very nature, always disturbing. When people attend their first workshop or attempt their first piece of therapeutic writing, on their own or at another’s instigation, it is often a result of change or an attempt to accomplish change.

The beginning of a course, a session, a workshop arouses many thoughts and feelings in participants and facilitator alike. Many of the contributors to this book allude to the anxiety provoked by the prospect of sharing private things in personal writing springing from unknown places. In this chapter Victoria Field recalls her own anxiety as a participant in her first writing workshop. This acts as a timely reminder to all of us engaged in this work that our own experiences are a vital tool. Her exercise here suggests no sharing of writing but initial conversational sharing as a way of coming together and overcoming some of those fears. Participants then introduce their partner to the whole group but their writing and themselves are kept private.

Writing may be an unfamiliar idiom, may even be unavailable to some – as in Kate D’Lima’s piece, where people are helped by others to tell their stories which the group recognises and collaborates upon. Zeeba Ansari talks about expectations and the failure of expectation: anxiety and expectation are all tied up together at the start of anything new.

So, how to begin? Warm-ups are those exercises designed as preliminaries, intended to warm the ink in the pen, melt the resistance, and reduce the level of anxiety in the room and in the person. They need to be short and clear, containing without being prescriptive (often what people need at this stage is to be reassured that they cannot ‘do it wrong’).

I have a favourite activity which I often do even before introductions or ground rules. This is so people can establish a relationship with the self and with writing before they have to interact or share. I offer the following questions for a three-minute write:

Who am I?

Why am I here?

What do I want?

These questions produce answers on many levels and evoke different responses depending on time or context. I then invite people to read and give themselves written feedback, before sharing with the group their thoughts and feelings about the process or the writing itself, should they want. (Adapted from an exercise in a workshop with Kathleen Adams.)

There are other ways of beginning apart from engaging instantly with writing. Victoria Field uses a structured conversational game to break the ice and allow people to begin to make connections with other members without exposure. Cheryl Moskowitz describes beginning with other kinds of activity, going out of the room, walking through other spaces and becoming aware of the environment through sensory experience.

In simplicity we often return to childlike states when we would hope to have been safe and protected. Some contributors make this link and Larry Butler’s exercise invites people to think about their fears and expectations at the beginning of a workshop using the acrostic form (where the letters of a word, often a name, are written down the page to provide the first letter of each line) which is often familiar from childhood. He calls the acrostic ‘a great leveller’ suggesting that all participants are equal within the form. Kathleen Adams takes the connection to childhood one step further in her AlphaPoems which she explicitly links to the rhythms of early years and psychodynamic psychotherapy theory.

In beginnings a facilitator can take the opportunity to establish cohesiveness in the room: relationships begin to build internally for individuals and externally trust begins to grow within the group. Research has shown that group cohesiveness is correlated with positive therapeutic outcome (Yalom 1985), just as the relationship is shown to be the most significant factor in individual work. Initially, as Yalom says, ‘you [the facilitator] are the group’s primary unifying force; the members relate to one another at first through their common relationship to you’ (Yalom 1985, p.113).

Cheryl Moskowitz thinks about the wonder of this process and looks at different ways of being and writing together and of facilitating the journey towards cohesiveness.

Kathleen Adams first establishes a safe group experience in her workshop from which people can then move with some confidence into their own individual space and writing. Kate D’Lima moves the other way: from individual to absorption and acceptance by the group.

Where are you Today?

Victoria Field

This idea has evolved from the old writing workshop favourite – the Furniture Game (in which people are asked to choose a metaphor for a person such as an animal, flower or piece of furniture). It provides an oral route into therapeutic writing and is a great ice-breaker with a group of strangers at the beginning of a new course. Depending on the size of the group and how much discussion there is at the end, this takes around 45 minutes.

At five minutes to one, I walk into the large, light room at the back of the Arts Centre. The tables are arranged in a horseshoe shape and between 12 and 18 people are seated around them. There is a mixture of apprehension and excitement in the air. It is the first session of a ten-week course in ‘Writing for Self-Discovery’ and I, as the tutor, am also excited and nervous at the prospect of the journey ahead. Today, we are complete strangers – after ten weeks, several will comment that they know their fellow students better than their own family.

All I have from the adult education college before this first session is a list of names and addresses. I see that most students are local but am always surprised at how some are prepared to travel many miles. There are usually four or five female names to every male. This is an afternoon course and, typically, those attending will have paid a concessionary fee indicating that they are retired, students or claiming benefits. Of the others, some will be shift or part-time workers or else looking after school-age children. One year, the ages ranged from 18 to 88.

I have no idea how much writing the students will have done – only that it will vary hugely. Having attended my own first creative workshop less than ten years ago, I do know how daunting it is to share one’s personal writing. I also know that some will have had unhappy experiences in formal education, and attending a ‘class’, with the possibility of being judged, takes enormous courage. It helps that this course is held in a busy arts centre in the middle of town, rather than on school or college premises. All of these issues will be addressed directly later in this first session when I introduce my aims for the course, its emphasis on ‘process’ and the fact that I will not be reading their work on the page.

I have two intentions with this activity – to hear everyone’s voice, both literal and imaginative, and to have everyone write something unexpected that will confirm to them that they ‘can do it’.

I begin by asking people to sit comfortably and focus on their breathing, closing their eyes if they wish. To relax. I then ask them to answer what may seem an odd question – if they were a place, what place would they be? I say, it may be a whole country, a city, a village, a piece of countryside or a building. I encourage them to stay with their first thought and then to consider the place from different perspectives – is it busy or quiet? Old, new or a mixture? What is the climate like? What is it like visually? What is its history? And so on. I check whether everyone has somewhere.

I then ask people to pair up and find a space with someone to whom they have not spoken yet and to introduce themselves as the place. ‘I am Patricia – I am Petersburg’ or ‘I am Michael – I am Swanpool Beach’. Their partner is then to ask them questions as if they are the place. ‘How do you feel about being so cold in winter?’ or ‘What’s it like when all the tourists come?’.

I allow ten minutes for this, announcing, after five minutes, that if one of the pair has dominated the partners should swap over to allow equal time for each of them. I am aware that some pairs stay with the metaphor and use the first person, whilst others begin to discuss the places in a general way. Yet others will discover other common ground and begin to chat. I don’t think this matters.

I then ask them to return to their seats and to introduce their partner with their place and to say just one or two things that came out of their conversation. ‘This is Betty – she is Southern Spain, hot and passionate’. ‘This is Sally – she is a tiny Yorkshire village, remote and quiet’. Often, fellow students will express surprise and delight as the places mentioned somehow enter the room and change the atmosphere.

I then invite reflections on doing that activity. These often include how it gives a short cut to understanding the person; how places, like people, are complex and changing and how it was fun to use a metaphor. I suggest that, on different days, we might well choose completely different places.

I then invite everyone just to write a few lines in their notebook – for themselves only – on the place they chose, its characteristics and anything they may have learned about themselves as a result.

Everyone’s voice has been heard by everyone in the group and everyone has written something.

This activity can stand alone as an ice-breaker but is also a natural lead-in to other variations of the Furniture Game, where other metaphors (plants, animals, furniture) can be used to describe people.

Hobnobs

Angie Butler

Hobnob is a meeting of a small supportive group of people with an interest in writing, often around a kitchen table, sometimes outside. The sessions will differ, but may be led b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• By the same Authors
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Someone Says
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One: Writing from Without
• Part Two: Writing from Within
• Appendix 1. Map Of The Book
• Appendix 2. Classic Exercises
• Appendix 3. Useful Resources
• References
• Contributors
• Subject Index
• Author Index