darkemeralds (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
darkemeralds) wrote2009-06-19 08:56 am
darkemeralds) wrote2009-06-19 08:56 am
Metaphor as change-work
I went to Bev Martin the other day for help with my terribly slow writing. Bev's a hypnotherapist--one of my teachers--and a writer herself. I was sure she could help, and she did.
She used Clean Language, a questioning technique designed to guide the client to her own metaphor of change, completely uninfluenced by the practitioner. It's the inverse of standard hypnotherapy, which explicitly seeks to influence.
All the questions start with "And..." Each question feeds the client's own words back, and never makes assumptions, so the questions are odd and ungrammatical, and your rational mind gives up and hides.
Me: "I love that moment of inspiration, of knowing that I have a new story to write! And when I'm writing well, it's the most fun there is. Then I get lost and start wasting time writing the wrong thing..."
Bev: "And when there is new story to write, what is it?"
Me: "There's a moment when the idea comes to me and I know it's my next story. I can feel it. I'm like a cat at a mouse-hole, completely focused, and it's the best feeling it the world."
Bev: "And when there is know the next story and feel it, where is it?"
Me: "It's here, under my ribcage, in my solar plexus."
Bev: "And when here, under the ribcage, does here have a color?"
Me: It's dark. Black. But luminous. Luminous darkness.
Over the next hour I constructed a detailed, multi-sensory metaphor of story-writing (a pitch-dark museum filled with treasures), including the problem (turning on the lights and seeing everything at once, becoming unfocused and confused) and its solution (spotlights! One at a time!).
The source of the problem was there too: inspiration apparently bears enough neurochemical resemblance to fear that a well-intentioned buffer was kicking in. It looked like a flying saucer, and I made it fly away by showing it that I was having fun, not fear. I also found a tool: my right hand will start twitching the instant the fun level starts to drop.
The session ended with an image of me following a dancing spotlight away down a dark corridor, having as much fun as a cat with a flashlight beam.
Change work without change is just self-indulgence. Any change so far? Well, I got up an hour early yesterday and wrote a missing character in a pivotal scene that I've been avoiding for a month. I think that counts.
She used Clean Language, a questioning technique designed to guide the client to her own metaphor of change, completely uninfluenced by the practitioner. It's the inverse of standard hypnotherapy, which explicitly seeks to influence.
All the questions start with "And..." Each question feeds the client's own words back, and never makes assumptions, so the questions are odd and ungrammatical, and your rational mind gives up and hides.
Me: "I love that moment of inspiration, of knowing that I have a new story to write! And when I'm writing well, it's the most fun there is. Then I get lost and start wasting time writing the wrong thing..."
Bev: "And when there is new story to write, what is it?"
Me: "There's a moment when the idea comes to me and I know it's my next story. I can feel it. I'm like a cat at a mouse-hole, completely focused, and it's the best feeling it the world."
Bev: "And when there is know the next story and feel it, where is it?"
Me: "It's here, under my ribcage, in my solar plexus."
Bev: "And when here, under the ribcage, does here have a color?"
Me: It's dark. Black. But luminous. Luminous darkness.
Over the next hour I constructed a detailed, multi-sensory metaphor of story-writing (a pitch-dark museum filled with treasures), including the problem (turning on the lights and seeing everything at once, becoming unfocused and confused) and its solution (spotlights! One at a time!).
The source of the problem was there too: inspiration apparently bears enough neurochemical resemblance to fear that a well-intentioned buffer was kicking in. It looked like a flying saucer, and I made it fly away by showing it that I was having fun, not fear. I also found a tool: my right hand will start twitching the instant the fun level starts to drop.
The session ended with an image of me following a dancing spotlight away down a dark corridor, having as much fun as a cat with a flashlight beam.
Change work without change is just self-indulgence. Any change so far? Well, I got up an hour early yesterday and wrote a missing character in a pivotal scene that I've been avoiding for a month. I think that counts.
no subject
hope you're having a good fic day!
no subject
I love writing nasty-ass manipulative trouble-making bitchery and greed when I get going, but I hate inserting blackmail and mayhem into the happiest part of the story, so I've been putting it off.
Now I'm having a blast.
no subject
As you might know, The Decemberists are my favoritest band ever in the history of ever, and this icon is taken from one of my favoritest of their songs (and I have a lot of favorites in their discography, let me tell you) called "The Engine Driver". The lyric goes:
I am a writer,
A writer of fictions
I am the heart that you call home.
It came to mind while I was reading this post.
no subject
Thank you. When I start listening to music again, I will start with the Decemberists.
Just finished the profile of a whole new character. She was in the dark museum room this whole time, but I just found her with the spotlight. Amazingly enough, she doesn't think of herself as the bad guy! Funny how that works.
Oh, and my writing break today was watching The Fall. While I thought it was incredibly gorgeous, and very moving, I don't think I related to it well. Perhaps I should re-watch with subtitles, because the little girl's accent got in my way. Lee Pace was amazing in it, and the direction for the little girl was stunning--some of the best child-acting I've ever seen. So while I am very far from disliking it, I'd love to know more about what puts it so high on your list.
no subject
no subject
When you're in an introspective, light-trance state and someone you've placed in authority (by making the appointment and agreeing to pay them money for helping you) asks you, "What color is it?" your answer will come from a very different place than if they'd asked, "Does it have a color?".
If the answer would have been "red" in either case, the next question will be the same, but if the answer is really, "It has no color, I perceive no color, color isn't important here," then the next question will be different, and so will the outcome.
So the trail you wind up following with this method seems to lead toward a fully useful metaphor entirely of your own making, with virtually no contamination from the practitioner. Bev said it took her a ten-day course just to learn how to ask the questions right. It was pretty cool.
no subject
Yes. It's like it's giving the therapee permission to engage with their own symbolism. Something that people like Joss and Kazuya Minekura seem to do instinctively.
no subject
It wasn't till after the session was finished that Bev the practitioner revealed that she had worked on precisely the same issues in her training--writer's block, bad writing habits, desire to finish a book 9nteresting coincidence, to say the least). She described the metaphor she had created, and it was completely different from mine.
Makes me think about how often I've experienced failure by trying to make someone else's success work for me.
no subject
And not just in fic?
no subject
no subject
no subject
I am guffawing even while I can feel your mom's terror and your dad's confusion! If the light had just come on, the gun-totin' dummy would have caused at least a second's alarm, but the fact that the light burned out at just that moment makes the story brilliant.
I can imagine that even in that brief, confusing flash, your parents both knew that it wasn't a gunman, but a stuffed coverall with a toy--because we do perceive an awful lot in a flash. But the fear response does its just-in-case thing only a millisecond after perception, and takes over the show.
So your story is a great metaphor too!