Writing is transformation.
Pen, page, and prompts are your portal.
This page is about writing as a personal practice. My other essays about writing are here.
“If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.” ― Martin Luther
Unlock your creativity,
Meet your shadow,
Find your gold,
Get unstuck,
Find flow.
All you need to re-write your story are pen and paper. Also, courage. Perhaps a prompt or two.
Quick start: the method in three minutes.
Get:
A pen that flows well,
Paper (a fresh notepad),
20+ minutes of time without distractions (turn off the phone…),
Ideally privacy.
Pick one practice and/or a prompt. Set a timer for 20+ minutes and whatever happens, keep writing. Don’t worry about spelling, grammar, just let it flow. That’s basically it.
Treat every session as an experiment. Approach it with curiosity, earnestness; playfully but committed.
Depending on your situation, different approaches may be most effective. Unstructured stream-of-consciousness writing is accessible but can lead to avoidance of deeper issues. If we’re stuck or in a difficult transition, specific prompts or targeted practices can be helpful.
I think of it as a combination of:
Practice: how you write
Prompt: what you write about
Pointer: help if you get stuck
I share detailed practices and pointers in the longer section below.
The most powerful rotation I’ve found is: Sarno method to get to my emotions, prompts for specific issues, inner dialogue when I get stuck.
If you’re dealing with any kind of chronic health issue, I would recommend the work of Dr. Sarno as developed into a journaling method by Nicole Sachs. More details below.
If you feel emotionally stuck or tense, I would also recommend the Sarno practice to “break open”.
Stuck on a big decision? Try the inner dialogue to explore inner resistance. Get curious about your inner opinions and conflicts.
Looking for more creative flow? Try unstructured stream-of-consciousness morning pages.
Dealing with a lot of anxiety? Look at the Samurai method.
Looking to re-write the story of your life? You might use of all these in spurts. Start experimenting.
Zooming in.
How it works
Dead-simple things to try right now
Setting and mindset
Specific writing exercises
The Value of Discipline: Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages
Can writing heal? JournalSpeak by Dr. John Sarno and Nichole Sachs)
Inner dialogue: The Screenwriter’s Prayer by David Milch
There are no problems: The Samurai method
How it works.
Solo writing. The work is done by hand with pen and paper. The goal is to go as deep as you can. Move as far as you can from thinking to feeling and intuition. Ideally, “let the writing flow through you.”
Get a fresh notebook/journal and a pen that flows well. Set aside at least 20 minutes (ideally longer; takes time to get into flow). Pick a prompt and write stream of consciousness until you get past the initial clutter and to emotional responses or surprises.
Try to be as perceptive as you can to any feelings that come up, especially those that disappear again in the blink of an eye. Follow what you are avoiding with curiosity.
Set up an experiment (use the Ness Labs framework). The highest value would be a daily journaling session for at least a week (or perhaps a month..). It can take a few sessions until things start to happen.
Play around with the different prompts. Set a timer and keep writing. If something feels flat, write about that. I don't like this writing exercise and I want to do something else and... until something happens. Maybe you hit the emotion you’re avoiding, maybe you get curious, maybe something surprising comes up.
Collect what sticks out. Don’t stop writing but put a little dot or x next to meaningful words or sentences — memories, emotions, beliefs, ideas, insights, surprises, questions, fully formed quotes… Especially the surprising, shocking, heartbreaking, and unspeakable…
Keep a second notebook to collect these moments. Use this place also to track your journey. Look for themes and changes.
One voice. Experiment with speaking the words out loud while you’re writing. Let the inner voice guide the hand but let the rest of the mind-body experience the sound of what you’re formulating. This can help you understand what holds an emotional charge.
Dead-simple things to try right now:
Tap into your unconscious ‘night shift’: use sleep, naps, and other quiet space to answer questions with the The Most Important Question method.
Journal before bed (use prompts like gratitude or surprise or energy — see this conversation with Devin Martin; or the rose, bud, thorn)
Brain dump: write down everything that is on your mind. Write until your hand hurts and there is nothing left to say. Of all the things cluttering your mind, which need more attention? What have you been avoiding? What is a distraction from what matters?
Setting and mindset.
The page is there to face your truth. Give it undivided attention. Meet it with curiosity and courage.
Structure and environment. This is a dance. Structure and routine are good. Same time and same place will condition your mind to get into flow more quickly. However, once you have a routine, it’s good to break it up!
Set a timer. Try to do at least 20 minutes. It can take time to get in the zone, especially early on.
No distractions. No phone, no nothing. Noise-cancelling headphones yes, music no. Soft ambient is ok (and can be important if you’re in a noisy space like a cafe).
Music can be very effective for writing but it can steer us, speed us up, slow us down. The artist can take you where they are, but the point of this practice is to listen to what is already present within you. We’re not looking to ‘get in the zone’ but be curious and aware.
The more privacy the better. My most intense sessions left me sobbing. I’ve broken pens. I’ve poked through pages. The minute you are around other people a degree of self-censorship happens.
Build a ritual. Experiment with different ways to enter the practice. You could start with a few minutes of breathing, with a moment of silent reflection or gratitude. You could say a prayer or ask for guidance.
If you’re doing an emotionally intense exercise: make time to soothe and relax after (I love Ally’s Yoga Nidra).
Support the process with other practices. Anything that allows the unconscious to surface is good. Anything embodied is good. Anything offering stillness or stillness-in-motion is good. Could be anything as long as you are fully present (no music, no podcasts…): gardening, doing the dishes, martial arts, surfing, meditation, breathwork, sauna, cardio…
Easy, free, and extremely effective: silent walking (no podcast, no audiobook, no music, no calls). Walk as long as you can afford, ideally in nature. Solvitur ambulando, “it is solved by walking.”
Cleanse. I would highly encourage a content diet. Get as much distance as possible to what everyone else does and cares about. Stillness will make you more sensitive to your inner guidance.
Cut out podcasts, newsletters, and ideally most social media for a week (a month?!). Max out time with family, friends, walking, nature. (Mindless TV with family, (old) films, and books are ok :) )
If in doubt: Pointers.
Resistance is a messenger, stuckness is a prompt. Notice the urge to distract yourself. Notice what you avoid. Return to where you left off and what you felt. Where do I feel this in my body? What am I not saying?
Fear is a signal. be curious. Make friends with it. Hit the “what else” button and look for the emotion behind the emotion. See the Samurai method: Fear for example often conceals something else.
You are the they. “What if I am everyone in the dream.” Notice any judgments about others. People are your mirror. What triggers you about them often reflects how you feel about yourself. Re-write your statement about others with your name instead. (“X frustrates me so much because she is unreliable and selfish. … am I unreliable and selfish…?)
People are fractal. I find it helpful to look at the mind as a combination of multiple sub-personalities, parts, in the framework of Internal Family Systems. Each part can have a different perspective on reality. When you feel stuck, conflicted, constricted, you can relate to that part of yourself.
Study transformation frameworks. There is tremendous power in metaphor. Look for stories and myths that offer the source code of your journey. I’ve written about The Maze and Dante.
The answer is love. This may sound cheese but if you’re really stuck, take a step back and ask: what about this — situation, person, … — am I having a hard time loving? Why? So many times it comes back, eventually, to the love we feel (or lack) for ourselves.
This is the acid test for any behavior: if I could radically love and accept myself, would I still want do this?
Just keep writing.
Write your way through grief and sadness, loneliness and failure, judgment and self-loathing.
Write through your mechanisms of avoidance.
Keep writing when you want to check the phone (turn it off!), or go to the kitchen or talk to someone.
Keep writing when you’d rather stare at the wall. Or stare for a moment.
When you can’t bear it anymore, write a little bit more.
Write until the gates open.
Write until what has been left unsaid is right there, on the page, staring back at you.
Write to admit to yourself the most difficult truths of your life. Give them form. Spend time with them. There may be some to leave behind and some that turn out to be the gold in your broken vase.
When in doubt, just keep writing.
Writing exercises
The Value of Discipline: Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages
Are Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages the best known writing practice? It’s where I started many years ago. Three pages every morning. By hand. Consistently.
It’s a great place to get started because it’s hard. Three pages can take a long time when you’re not used to it.
But it’s so simple yet effective. Get into flow, into motion. Clear out your mind, dump it all on the page. See if there’s a nugget or two in the clutter.
When to use: when you have no writing practice, when you need hard discipline, when you are brutally stuck. Challenge yourself to get started with a pen every morning.
Can writing heal? JournalSpeak by Dr. John Sarno and Nichole Sachs)
Dr. John Sarno explored the mind-body connection to help patients who suffered from chronic back pain. “As with Freud’s patients, I found that my patients’ physical symptoms were the direct result of strong feelings repressed in the unconscious,” he wrote.
For me, it wasn’t the back. My jaws were clenched. My stomach and abdomen were tight, sometimes in pain. I struggled with anxiety and depression. I was disconnected from my feelings. I avoided intimacy. My relationship with pornography was unhealthy.
‘JournalSpeak’ is the dead-simple practice fleshed out by Sarno’s student Nicole Sachs. She explains the method in the first episodes of her podcast and YouTube channel.
If I had to boil it down: write until you cry — Until the Heart Catches.
Make a list of stressors (Sarno: “List all the pressures in your life, since they all contribute to your inner rage.”).
Nicole recommends three lists: past stressors, current stressors, and personality tests.
Pick one and write for at least 20 minutes.
Sarno: “Write an essay, the longer the better, about each item on your list. This will force you to focus in depth on the emotional things of importance in your life.”
Sachs: “Tell the radical truth and don’t be afraid to go deep. Invite your feelings to rise. They won’t always do so right away, and that’s okay! True readiness is everything. Just stay the course and you will be surprised what comes out. The key is to stay focused on your emotional response.”
Sachs recommends “a self-soothing meditation for 10 minutes” afterward. I definitely need a break after an intense session. I swear by this Yoga Nidra channel (lie down, cover your eyes, listen, sink and float…).
Challenge yourself to do this daily for 28 days.
Inner dialogue: the Screenwriter’s Prayer by David Milch
When David Milch (Deadwood!) wrote his first book, he got stuck writing “the same twelve pages” over and over, “almost word for word.” For six months!
He practiced a kind of anti-writing. He didn’t write, he dictated. He tried to “disembody” himself and dictate what emerged. If you read his book or watch his talk you will notice that he is deeply spiritual. “Every day, before I start to write, I pray,” he wrote, “and I ask to be willing, and then I see what happens.”
His writing exercise is an exercise in getting out of the way — to let your inner voices speak and, perhaps, eventually transcend into something greater. Become the observer, the vessel. Let yourself be surprised.
For the next five days, find a time each day, preferably the same time, and sit down and write not less than twenty minutes and not more than fifty minutes.
Don’t think about it, don’t set it up on the computer, don’t think about what you’re going to write before you do it. No exceptions.
Two voices, one and two. No names. No description. That means no description. Voice one and voice two. The setting—don’t say what the setting is. Write for not less than twenty minutes with those two voices. Just follow, just hear what they say. Not more than fifty minutes.
Put it in an envelope, seal the envelope, and shut up. Don’t talk about it. Don’t think about what it means. Don’t think about who they are.
The next day, preferably at the same time, sit down and do it again. They may be the same voices, they may be different voices, don’t worry about it. Whatever comes out is fine. Don’t think about it. Just do it.
There are no problems: separating emotions from circumstances
See my full piece: There are no problems.
1) anything my mind is looping on as a “problem” is concealing an emotion I’m avoiding, and then 2) the path forward is moving into the experience it is trying to warn me about in full embodied intensity.
When the fear abates, the mind stops looping—it is no longer in survival mode. When the emotions are seen and consoled, all of the things that used to pull the lower self into getting involved simply become things “you see” (as the impartial observer). — Samurai trader Mike at Trading from a Place of Being
Where does your mind seem to get stuck? What have you not been able to tackle, to think past or through?
Find the ‘emotional charge’. If this happens… If I do… What happens in your body? What body part? Where does it lead? What emotion comes up next?
What if the first layer of emotion is a shield, a distraction, a misdirection?
What if the story you tell yourself is a way of avoiding how you feel?
Allow yourself to experience this fully. Give yourself time.
Try the inner dialogue exercise to give the feelings a voice.
Remain curious and allow yourself to feel until you can clearly separate what there is to do from what there is to be felt.