The Experiment: Day 291 ~ How I Teach — What You Can Expect In The Sunday Night Writing Group…

As I re-enter this space once more, that of being a teacher, I am stepping into the most sacred work of my life. Nothing in terms of work that I have done in the world has been more important. It is a spiritual commitment for me. When I stopped teaching and withdrew from the world I lost a very important part of myself. Now, in returning, I am rediscovering a piece of my lost heart.

The thing that I want to say to you is that this is much more than a writing class to me. This is not about “how-tos” nor is it about good or bad, right or wrong. Your work will not be critiqued. In my classes what I want, most of all, is for my students to be able to stand up with who they are, to absolutely know that what they have written is perfect for them in that moment, and that it could be, or should be, nothing more. Spelling, punctuation, grammar, do not matter. What you are doing, in a timed writing, is capturing your heart, and the essence of who you are, in the moment that you write. It is perfect. It is sublime. It is full of grace.

If I were to give you rules for writing I would give you Jack Kerouac’s list of 30 essentials, “Belief and Technique for Modern Prose.” (That link goes to a wonderful article on his prose essentials from Brain Pickings. To print out the list alone go here.) To make my point here are a few that I especially love…

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy

4. Be in love with yr life

10. No time for poetry but exactly what is

20. Believe in the holy contour of life

24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge

28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better

29. You’re a Genius all the time

It was the Beat generation, it was jazz and writing. For some long time my classes were called JazzProse. Ballantine Books kept the book I wrote of that name for some time before they finally returned it. It didn’t get published but it was important work for me. My classes have been alternately part Beat, part Zen, and absolutely centered in the heart. My job, as a teacher, has never been to help you find your way to writing the Great American Novel. It has been to help you embrace all of who you are, celebrate all of who you are, love all of who you are, and capture it on paper so that you remember.

My job, as a teacher, first and foremost, is to create safe and sacred space. Because I do not critique, nor will I allow comments from others about your writing, being able to look deeply into your eyes after you read so that you have the absolute acknowledgement of having been seen, and heard, is very important to me. After you read I will say, “Good, thank you.” And that is not good vs. bad, it is good, thank you so much for sharing a piece of your heart, we are honored to bear witness, thank you. At first this is hard for some people, people want to be told that they are okay, that they are good, that what they have written is good, but in the way that I teach one develops a kind of courage and knowledge that they are indeed absolutely “good,” they are everything they need to be and should be in that moment, that it is acknowledged, that they can carry that forward and know it in their heart in every moment of every day. Some people want to read and then jump into explanations about what they have written but I will gently stop them. No comments are allowed, at all. Just write, read, I say thank you, there is a moment of silent respect. What this establishes, for people, once they get used to it, is a feeling of safety. No one is going to critique their work, their understanding that they are okay does not come about because someone else tells them that they are, they come to understand, simply, that they are exactly where they need to be, fully, in that moment. Believe in the holy contour of life.

As I lead us into writing together with brief phrases, or sometimes series of connected exercises that work together, we write, we read, we write, we read, (No one ever has to read if they are not comfortable doing so and as the group grows there may not be time for everyone to read every time. Reading is nice, but the main benefit comes in doing the writing.) and at the end we are more than we were when we started, we have unearthed bits of ourselves that we didn’t have access to before we started, we carry out of the space a new knowledge of ourselves that we can take back with us into our life. I have never taught a single class, in 40 years, wherein I did not walk away new, energized, more alive, and grateful for the time spent writing. And writing in community is a powerful thing. We are doing something very special together. We ride on waves of energy generated by the power of writing. There has not been anything in my life more thrilling and exciting than writing in a group of people. It is life-changing.

As far as how this kind of writing is connected to other kinds of writing you do think of it this way. Every time you write you are greasing the wheels for what comes next, you get the writing mechanism working, the flow of creativity is stirred up, in the act of timed writing wherein you must keep your hand moving no matter what comes up things spill out that you wouldn’t be able to access if you just sat there waiting for inspiration to come. There is no right or wrong way to do this as long as you dive in and write without ceasing until the timed writing is done. There is magic there.

There is an important blog post here that explains why this type of writing is so important if you are going to do other types of writing (Novels, short stories, poems, etc.).

I will be honored to be sharing the time and space with you. We will be creating something together that we cannot do alone, and then we will carry what we have shared back out into the world and into our lives. That’s where the real magic happens.

If you are interested in joining us on Sunday nights please send me an email to: TheSundayNightWritingGroup@gmail.com. Classes are offered on a donation basis with a suggested donation of $5 per class. Also this class requires a serious commitment, it is not a “come when you feel like it” kind of class. Please read this post for more information about what this class is all about and what you have to be willing to commit to. Thank you.