Finding the Writer's Heart: Ten Rules for A New Kind of Writing Group

“Clarity is everything,” Confucius is reported to have said, and, though he was certainly not a writer in any modern sense, he may as well have been, considering how writers have, down the

ages, echoed his thoughts.  “I always thought,” said Bertoldt Brecht, “the very simplest words must be enough - when I say the way things really are, people’s hearts must be torn to shreds.”  Or Hemingway’s admonition to “write hard and clear about what hurts.”

Note the focus from these writers on the emotional, on the heart.  “Fill your paper,” Wordsworth said, “with the breathings of your heart.”   Maya Angelou tells us that “the idea is to write it so that...it slides right through the brain and straight to the heart.”

Clarity, clarity, clarity.  Heart, heart, heart.  If all writers could find and keep these qualities, then we would never have to browse the bookstore, in desperate search for something that would not bore or repel us.   Every book we picked up would slide right through our brains and into our hearts.  But, like everything in the world, it is, of course, not this simple.  So writers seek help in the company of their fellows - they join writing groups or have writing buddies or critic-pals, or use paid professional services to seek through the drafts of what they’ve written for that spark, that thing that will lead both writer and reader to the heart.  What they get back, more often than not, is line-editing, suggestions for sentence structure, observations about logistical problems in the movement of a scene, or the structure of their plot.  All that is essential to the craft of the writer, but not to the writer’s heart.  And if the writer’s heart and soul are not in the work, then what’s the point?

What happens in most writing groups, writing classes, and critic-partnerships is a focus on technique.  That is fine.  It’s not only fine, it’s essential, but it is not the thing that makes a great writer, or a great piece of writing.   To do their best work, writers must move beyond technique, to find that clarity, that deep sense in their hearts that moves them toward clarity in their work and on the page.  

What I propose is a new model for writer’s groups that is based on the Quaker practice of Clearness Committees.  As those communities use it, it is a space among trusted fellows were a person with a problem can be  helped towards the answer.  As a structure for a writer’s group, it will be radically different from any such group you have ever tried, and I have tried many, many.  The use of this model will be, much like its Quaker counterpart, based on a single assumption, and a set of rules.  While our assumptions and rules will differ in details, the substance will be the same.  Our assumption:   every writer - every writer- has within their self a singular spot of truth and meaning, that simply needs to be accessed and acknowledged to help them to be the best writers that they can.  

To bring this assumption into an effective writing group, three things are required:  1) the set of rules;  2) a clear understanding of the spatial/environmental requirements; and 3) an understanding of what an ‘open, honest question’ is.   

Here is how a writer’s group, based on the Clearness Committee model, works:  each meeting has one person as the “author.”  That person may (or may not) bring an actual piece of writing, and may choose to have her group read it ahead of time, or may choose to have them proceed with the

group without having read the piece the author is working on.  In preparation, the writer will identify what their most significant problem is with the piece.  Is it the development of the main character?  The structure?  The flow of the story?  This should not be influenced by what others may think of the piece, or what others have told you that you should be concerned about.  Rather:  what does not feel right?  Then, you can choose to write that down, either for yourself, or for the group.  You do not need to provide such a piece of writing for the group, but you would find it will be very valuable to you as the focus of the group.

When the group convenes, the author sits in the center of a half-circle, or, if using a table, at the head, where the author can easily see all and be seen by all.  The group should have identified, ahead of time, a facilitator and someone to record the session, either in notes or a sound recording.  At the beginning, the facilitator reminds everyone of the rules, monitors to be sure, as the meeting progresses, that people are abiding by the agreements that the rules impy,  and the monitor also ends the meeting on time.  

Adapted from the rules used by the Quaker community for their communal problem solving, here are the rules for Finding The Writer’s Heart:

1. All aspects -- all aspects -- of the meeting are entirely confidential.  You may never, outside of the meeting, discuss any words, advice, questions, answers, or readings encountered during the meeting, unless given permission by the author who is the focus.
2. The author prepares (either in writing or mentally) a statement of what their NEED is for the current piece they are writing.  In preparation of this, think also of what hunches you have about the solution, what resistance you feel, what you think could/should happen next.
3. The meeting lasts for three hours, with a single author as focus, a facilitator, and a recorder.
4. Begin the meeting with a time of silence, allowing the author who is the object of the meeting to focus and clarify mentally.  The author speaks to begin the meeting whenever they are fully ready to begin.  Others should remain silent until then.
5. The author states what the problem is,  what is the challenge, and the hunches they have.  When the author is done, others may speak, but ONLY to ask questions - NO ADVICE GIVING. NO SUGGESTIONS.   NO OBSERVATIONS.  The only speaking allowed among the group are OPEN, HONEST QUESTIONS.  
6. What is an “Open, Honest Question?”  The best way to define an open honest question is the type of question that the asker could not POSSIBLY know the answer to, and no answer is implied by the question itself.  (Further information about open, honest questions in the next post).  The GOAL of these questions is to help lead the author to FIND THE ANSWER IN THEMSELVES.   An open, honest, question is brief and to the point.   It is not leading.  It does not imply that you know the answer.  You don’t.  You need to help the author find the answer they already know.
7. The author can respond to questions or decide to pass.  If the author takes time to respond, WAIT - DO NOT PROD THE AUTHOR.
8. The questions should NEVER become grilling, or rapid-fire.  Respect the author’s space and trust the silence needed to get to the right answer.
9. During the course of the meeting, it is the job of others ONLY to ask questions, and to remain completely focused on the author.  If there are silences while the author thinks, waits for the next question, everyone should remain focused on that author - no joking or side conversations or fidgeting.    If any of these protocols are broken, it is the job of the facilitator to remind all of the rules and get the meeting back on track.
10. The meeting should go the full allotted time - DO NOT QUIT because you think you’ve “run out of questions” -- dig deeper.

Neither the author nor the group should assume that one meeting will help the author to clarity, to the solution needed.  It may, but multiple meetings may also be needed.  This kind of writing group is clearly more time-intensive than the typical read-a-few-pages-share-commentary-move-to-the-next-writer model.  It requires commitment.  However, having experienced (as what the Quakers call “the focus person”) Clearness Committees, I can promise you that the results will be much deeper than anything you’ve experienced in a writing group to date.

Two more things are required to practice this form of Clearness for writers:   the foundations of the environment, rooted in accepting six paradoxes of human nature, and a clear understanding of (and practice with) “open, honest questions.”   These two will follow in the next post.

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Much credit and thanks to:  first, Parker Palmer, the Quaker philosopher, writer, and educator who founded The Center for Formation in the Community College, with which I was privileged to train for five years;  second, all the members of the various Clearness Committees in which I have participated.  I highly recommend reading Palmer’s “Let Your Life Speak” in preparation for this work.  My handbook for writer’s group to use this method will be available for free on my website within one month of the final post on this method (the next post in this series).

3 WAYS TO BE ETHICAL IN YOUR WRITING - OR - How to Love your Grandma even after she's gone

NOTE: I know that this post was supposed to be about using the Clearness Committee process for a writing group, and I have that post almost ready, I promise, in a day or two.  Today, though, other thoughts took over.

I am thinking today of a rather remarkable woman named Hermine Bozeanna Merker Forhan.  Born in Dux, Bohemia, she came to this country by way of Canada, and settled in the high mountains of Montana on a homestead she worked with her Irish-born husband, Billy Forhan. She spoke little English, and even years later when I (among the youngest of her many many grandchildren) knew her, she struggled with the language.

She was slight in stature, strong in spirit, gentle in nature.  She worked incredibly hard, suffering the loss of three of her children, the loss of her husband, and challenging and uncomfortable changes in the world around her - all faced with the softest, kindest eyes I have yet to encounter in my own

Hermine Bozeanna Merker (center)

increasingly long life.  I grew up listening to her heavily-accented voice talking, almost daily, over coffee with my mother - listening to her stories of Bohemia, listening to her laugh, watching her eyes sparkle, watching the weariness that lay heavier on her shoulders year after year, particularly as her memory began to go.  She died when I was away at college, and it had been some time since I had seen her.  

It occurs to me that few these days have the experience of direct exposure to someone like her in their childhood or in their lives.  She was an immigrant (one who might not make it into the country these days, and certainly one many pundits and wannabes would like to see kept out) - but she was also one of those who built this country.  A tiny woman, a powerful heart.  I won’t speak here of the conditions she faced when she fled her home country, or the challenges she overcame here.  I am thinking today of her, and of words.  I was in my garden with a friend recently and she said, “look - some plants are coming

up...some….”  …. And I said, “nasty-turtiums.”  She looked at me strangely, and I said, “Nasturtiums - it was what my grandmother called them….nasty-turtiums.”

“Didn’t she like them?”

“She loved them - it was just how she said the word.”

It hit me later how much of my long-lost grandmother has stayed with me -- the comfort in the memory of her kindness, the strength in the memory of her spirit, and even the humor of how she found her way around the language, and her own way to remember difficult words.  Like ‘nasturtium.’  I am fortunate (all of us in my over-large family are) to have known her, to have heard her stories, to have been exposed to her strength and the rich and meaningful arc of her life.  Not all are so fortunate.

Any time I think of good fortune, I am reminded by my upbringing (thank you to both Hermine and my mother, Margaret Ann) to remember also the obligations that good fortune brings - and this brings me to the relevance to writers.  In any fortune that we have - good or bad - we are ethically bound to honor it in our writing, lest we become merely hacks.  Here are the ways that I think we must, if we dare to call ourselves truly writers, meet our obligations to the past:

1. Honor the past.  Honor your past.   This is not simply avoiding the admonition that you might otherwise be doomed to repeat it - it is also a soul-deep obligation to be thankful for the gifts that past gives to you.  Whatever values, whatever skill, whatever inherent generational/genetic gifts it brought to you, those should be reflected in your writing.  My ancestors were all working people - homesteaders, brewmasters, bakers, seamstresses, nannies, railroad conductors, auto mechanics, cooks.  They worked hard - sometimes rewarded for that, sometimes cheated because of it, but always performed their work with pride.  They were honest, they loved to laugh, they cared more than anything about family.  Always I find the theme of the dignity of working people surfacing in my writing, and, each time I notice that, I feel gratitude for the past I have, that I was given.
2. Work as hard as your ancestors did.  Not one bit less.  Whatever they did, whatever they were, it meant, to one degree or another, working for it.  No skimping, no slacking, no sense of entitlement.  Pour that into your writing.  Never let a draft go out without carefully considering every element, every word, every transition, character, and scene.  Find the perfection that your grandmother found in every cross-stitch, that your father took in every polished piece of wood.  Do not be sloppy - your grandparents - and your readers - deserve better.
3. Do not forget.  Tell the truth.  One of the hardest things for working-class people, for people from oppressed groups, to hear is “you have forgotten where you come from.”  It is hard, because it cuts to the core of who you are, and so much in our culture urges us to break away from our roots, to become better than. It is a choice, this breaking away,  and not one you are required to make.  It is entirely possible to become the best writer you can be, and still be the child of your parents, of your culture.  Do not let it go.  Do not bury it.  Tell the truth about it - this is how literature is made. If your goal is to write pulp/popular fiction, then do that - but do it within the truth of the past you know, not some fantasized past.  

There are many ethical obligations in our world - certainly those obligations abound in our current climate, and no less for the writer.  If nothing else, as writers and as human beings, we have the obligation to honor those who got us, for good or ill, to where we now are.  

A New Approach to Writing Groups

Several years ago, I was the focus of a group called a “Clearness Committee.”  In a Clearness Committee, the “focus person” is both the luckiest member, and the one most on the spot.  The “focus person” is generally the one who convenes a clearness committee, because they have a problem to solve, or a decision to make, and are struggling.  In advance of the meeting, the focus person writes up their problem in as much detail as possible and gives it, ahead of

The Mabel Dodge Lujan House in Taos, New Mexico
Where my Clearness Training took place

time, to each member.   In the meeting itself, once it convenes, the members of the committee are only allowed to ask questions, not to comment or advise, and the focus person may either answer, or pass on a question.  Those who attend such meetings usually have training ahead of time, and the questions may only be what are called “Open Honest Questions” designed to help the focus person examine their own thoughts and feelings - never should the questions be leading, or advice masquerading as a question.  That is, no such questions as “Have you tried X?” - or - “Don’t you think the real problem is Y?”  Learning to ask only  open, honest questions is the real challenge in participating in a clearness committee, and takes a lot of practice.  The challenge for the focus person is to be as honest and thoughtful as possible with herself and the members, and to be ready to face thoughts and feelings that may be uncomfortable.

I volunteered to be the focus person for a group in training for Clearness Committees (as I was in training as well) because I was having a problem with a troublesome coworker.  I wrote up as much detail as I could, submitted it, and showed up for the committee meeting.  I had participated myself as a member several times, as all of us in this training were fairly advanced in the process, and had participated in several such committees as well as workshops and discussion groups.  I was prepared.  I thought.

There were, inevitably, a few questions which felt less than completely open, as though they were trying to lead you to an answer preferred by the questioner, and, in those instances you can (and I did) quietly say that’s how the question felt, and the group would move on to the next questioner.  The majority of  questions, though, were thought-provoking and revelatory.  I found myself facing ownership of more of the problem that I had previously realized, and, for the rest of it, realizing the best course was simple forgiveness and letting go.  I was never again distressed or concerned over the troublesome coworkers behavior, which continued unchanged, but which no longer felt relevant to my own job, even though her ire was quite clearly directed at me.

Recent life events have had me reflecting on that experience, and the need for that kind of focused clarity as I go forward in my life.  In addition, I was struck by how much I would like to have a writing group that functioned like a clearness committee - helping me to mine my own goals for a piece, explore the characters as they exist in my mind, and uncover the depth of purpose for a story I’m crafting.  I’ve been in many writing groups, and, as long time readers of this blog will recognize, there is at least one group, though I am no longer attending, that I dearly love.  Such groups, though, tend to practice essentially the same - a piece of writing is either submitted ahead of time, or brought to the group, the group reads and marks, and then gives line editing feedback, pointing out logistical errors or point of view problems, and reflecting on the construction of character, or the mood, or the arc of the story.

What if a writing group abandoned that, and simply asked the author questions, open honest questions, challenging her to mine her own intentions, her own purpose, her own goals for the story, in order to hone them, and hone it to a fine point, to it’s own ultimate clarity?  

In the following two blog posts, I am going to explore  a) the structure of Clearness Committees and how they could effectively function for a writing group, and b) the process of structuring (and answering) open, honest questions, again in the context of how this could work for story/character/theme development for authors.

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END NOTE:  Clearness Committees are a regular practice of Quaker Communities.  I became exposed to them through three years of training in a group developing Formation practices for Higher Education - adapting Quaker spiritual guidance processes to the development of authentic educators and pedagogy.  This practice and the training was begun by Quaker author/philosopher/educator Parker Palmer, and I am forever grateful to him for introducing me to a way of thinking which enriched my life, widened my mind, and calmed my spirit.

Of Hemingway, Or Whoever It Was Who Said This.....

“Write hard and clear about what hurts.”  Hemingway is reputed to have said this, though a couple of hours of searching have not found the source of the quote - those bloggers and websites who have (apparently) tried just note that they, like me, were unable to find a source, but love the quote.   I love it, too, and I sincerely hope that Hemingway did say it, as it fits my image of the man

quite well.

I love the quote, but I think it’s problematic.  I checked 14 different websites and/or blogs using this quote as a headline or a search term.  All but one interpreted the line to mean that you should write about your personal pain.  The other examined how Hemingway had written about universal pain in the human experience.  

Writing your own personal experience can be therapeutic, and writing about your own personal pain cathartic. But I don’t think that Hemingway, if he did say this, was proffering an invitation to view the craft and art of writing as a solipsistic endeavor.  Read his works, and you won’t believe it either.  While his works are rife with stories of the pain of human experience, they are not autobiographical.

What I think that Hemingway meant (if indeed he said this) is that you have to write about what hurts about the world - what matters to you to such a depth that the existence of the situation (or the problem or event) in the world breaks your heart. Write about what matters - and for that to be true of you as a writer, something has to matter to you.

I’ve written before (and struggled with for years) about the tendency of most writing advisories, most workshops, most books, etc., focusing on writing for the market - making what matters to you

getting published and not writing about anything that matters.  I still struggle with this, as there are certainly reasons to want your writing published, to work towards that -- but if there is no core to your writing, what kind of satisfaction can be had?  Another writer, a contemporary of Hemingway, had thoughts on this as well, saying:  “ It is better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. ‘(Cyril Connoly).

There have seldom been times when the world presented the human heart with so many challenges as it now does, when the battles of a human being were so critical to the survival of human dignity.  There are things in the world that matter.  Know about them.  Care about them.  Write about them.  Otherwise, why can you dare to ask readers to spend their time on you?

Dancing Alone - Thoughts on Faking It as a Writer

“Sometimes I paint fakes,” Pablo Picasso once said, though probably the story is apocryphal.  In a public gathering, where one of his paintings was on display, he’d denounced it as a fake and left.  A protege of his, who had watched Picasso paint the piece, ran after him, asking why he’d said it was fake, when he had, in fact, painted it.  Picasso is reported to have shrugged, uttered the line, and walked on.  

We all ‘fake it’ sometimes - let others believe we can do something or are skilled in some way.  Actors ‘phone it in’ for a performance; teachers do an old lesson not really suited to their present class; parents do what their parents did instead of what they feel they should.  At times, others get an impression of us or our abilities and we’re not quite sure how it happened, but we don’t correct them -  and, then, when the times comes to step up, we face the task or the situation with apprehension -- sometimes delighting ourselves in making it through, sometimes embarrassing ourselves, sometimes surprising ourselves that, in spite of the fact that we thought we were faking it, we actually were capable of….whatever.  And, sometimes, we simply choose not to do our best, because it’s easier to be middling, and we’re tired.

Sometimes we paint fakes.

In the face of that, though, is one thought to consider.  Those viewing the painting Picasso thought of as ‘a fake’ did not recoil from that work.  They admired it, lauded it, were moved by it. It did what the work of an artist is supposed to do - it engaged them.   Every artist, writer, musician - every creative soul - if they have been at it for any length of time - has had the experience of creating something that they think of as a “little” thing - an exercise, a lark - and then been surprised when others are moved by it.

In a recent conversation with my sister, she told me how a friend of hers named Eagle Man had wanted her write a section on Islam for his book.  She had been trying to ‘get out of it’ and he said to her:  ‘Do you want to pass into the spirit world not having said what you have to say?”

I have been thinking about this a great deal ever since.  Knowing what you have to say is one problem, but, beyond that, is the question of saying it.  Saying it right, at the right time, in the right way, in the right format, with the right metaphors, in the right venue...etc.  The number of things that can go wrong in just saying something are legion.  For some people, the thought paralyzes them, or sends them off to ‘paint fakes’ -- to do something that is, in their minds, lesser. And what occurs to me is that is entirely the right thing to do at some times, and the wrong thing to spend one iota of energy worrying about.

I am not saying - never, ever would I say - that you should settle for doing middling work.  We should always be brave, write about what hurts, sink our teeth into our stories, as LeGuin says, ‘until the blood runs.’  But, sometimes, the story or the work that occurs to you, that dominates your mind, may not feel like the right one for what you have to say.  But it won’t leave you alone so you write it, feeling all the while as though you should be doing something better.  For a writer serious enough to have thought about and identified what it is they have to say, what I can tell you is this - what you have to say is in there, whether you recognize it or not.  

Look at the work of a favorite writer, or artist, or musician - you will see themes within their work that carry across everything you read, or look at, or listen to.  One writer always ends up showing the plight of families trying to understand each other; a musician writes lyrics over and over that deal with the loss of innocence;  a painter is taken with the subject of liberation.  These themes, these messages, these expressions of what these artists have to say come through no matter where they were in the process,  or how well they believed they were doing it.

It will be there.  

That is, if you have something to say.  Just writing - just for fun - is perfectly acceptable. Like the trained dancer who, in the solitude of her own home, dances for sheer joy,  the writer sometimes needs to just let go and sweep words from the soul onto the page.  But when we bring our writing to others - to readers - they expect something.  That ‘something’ should be the thought, the message, the sheer purpose that drives you in your writing.  Which means that knowing what that is, identifying it, committing to it, is the one most  serious duty of the writer.  Know it.  Define it.  Hold it close, always.  That is task number one.  Then, as you learn to listen to the voice of the story in your head, to follow the whisper of a character in your mind, that message from your heart will come out with the words.  

Find what that is for you - and never let it go.  Then, from time to time, you can, without guilt, write to ‘paint a fake’ -- dancing in the privacy of your home.

Getting Lost

I had to do a lot of driving yesterday - errands, visits, etc - and, as is often the case in northwest towns in the Spring,  there were - obstacles. Road construction, work on utility lines, people in a hurry to be out in the sun crowding the streets, which, in many places, were narrowed by construction to a

single lane.  As a refugee from southern California traffic, I did what I could to avoid the problems, ducking down side-streets, taking alternate routes that circled around a crowded area instead of going through it, or just turning off down an unfamiliar street that happened to go in (roughly) the right direction.  I did fine - getting home in only five minutes longer than it normally takes me.

I did not get lost. It’s not a large city, but it’s also not a small town - quite possible to lose yourself in streets winding through a hilly section, or dead-ending when you try to go in the direction you need.  Neither of those things happened to me.  I navigated around the construction and congestion, took frequently-used and never-used alternate routes, and was fine.

Oddly, this bothered me.

When I first moved here, the plethora of one-way streets, streets that end and then, inexplicably, take up again blocks (or even miles) later, the dead-ends, the constant construction areas - all of that had me regularly lost on my way to work or shopping.  

It’s been a long time since that happened, and there’s a part of me that to some small degree misses it.

It’s said that Charles Dickens used to go out for long walks around London with the specific intention of getting himself lost;  he sought out that feeling of having no idea where he was, or which way to go.  Because then, in the midst of that feeling, is when his most creative streaks would hit - his story ideas, his characters, or the perfect scene around  to build a story.

I don’t get lost often; when moving to a new city, which I’ve done often, I find my way around quickly, building a mental 3-dimensional image of the town or city in my head.  The times that I did get lost, I either found my own way back relatively quickly, or was comfortable seeking help from whoever was encountered.  I have never felt that lost-panicky feeling - even when once, as a child, lost in the

mountains in the snow.  If my feet are on the ground, I seem to be comfortable enough moving a step at a time in whatever direction.

Untethered.  The best word I can think of to describe the feeling.  If I am not tethered to a place or a course of action or much of anything, then where I am right now is where I need to be.  When I thought of it that way, I fully understood Dickens and his urge to get lost in London - to be untethered, not connected or committed or bound.  A state of mind in which you can latch onto whatever thought or character or idea - real or fictional - that presents itself.  

That’s something worth losing yourself for.  Go take a walk. Get lost.