Happy New Year!
The sun is shining as I write this and I am about to go for a walk with a neighbour. Although the paths are muddy and the breeze chilly it will be the loveliest thing. Sometimes walking feels a bit like writing. Yesterday, despite the sunshine, it took me an age to get out on the road. I suddenly found a number of small jobs that had to be done before I could go out. I prevaricated about gloves and hats. I sat by my muddy boots for quite some time, simply staring into space. And then I was out in the lanes, startled by the yellow of a dandelion, happy to see the blush of mauve in the sky, sitting for a while on one of the benches John has made in the woodland, glad to gaze at the circle of hazels. And, today, how much pleasure there is to be had in walking with a friend.
And so it is with many things. We put off the moment, whether it is the plunge into a pool, the first strides of a run, the rolling out of a yoga mat. Afterwards when we have walked or run or made friends with downward dog, we feel good. Writing can make us feel well. It is good for the mind and spirit and the imaginative life. If you are reading this, you probably know that already. You may have been given, or gifted yourself, a new notebook for the new year. Hurrah! But let’s be realistic, and kind to ourselves. At this time of year we are bombarded with exhortations and advice towards the new person we are going to be in 2022.The stakes are too high! I have a number of notebooks that I began with a flourish on the first day of several Januaries and they remain unfilled. Once I had missed a day, or two, somehow I couldn’t go back to it. It is even worse if you have a diary where blank, dated pages serve as reminders of your failure to write on Tuesday and Saturday. It’s already past the first few days of the new year, so let’s start with the kind of cheap notebook that Natalie Goldberg recommends. It is spiral bound, may have a cartoon character on the front and is not so fat it can’t, realistically, be filled in a month.
Filling a notebook a month, getting the words on the page is what Natalie Goldberg recommends. It is our daily jog, our morning flow. Some people write morning pages: twenty minutes of non-stop writing with no expectation, even, that you will read back what you have written. Some people make a date to write with a friend. This is low stakes writing. There is no need to worry about the Great British novel just now. Tjis is just about words on the page.
In last Sunday’s Observer Magazine (2.1.2022) Michael Rosen wrote about the importance of play in his life, of playing with words and, as he learned when his son died, how writing things down helps him to confront the sadness:
… penning a poem about sadness or a sense of loss can leave you feeling better as well. It helps, laying things down on paper. I call it “unfolding”.
Everyone can do this, it doesn’t take expertise. Think of it as doodling with words.
There’s a tyranny to education: learning to write frees you, but we’re restricted by being taught that formal sentences are all that’s worthwhile. Instead, scribble down fragments – think up half-lines mixed with song lyrics, lines from films, things people say. Don’t overthink it - it’s like talking with your pen. This process is a liberation for the mind.
I am thinking that you know all this. And you know how, not only the commitment to the formal sentence, but the requirement to write at particular times and in ways that are defined by others often dominates how children write in schools. For many, it is the only way they experience writing. The young people we teach experience sadness, too. They have complicated lives. They worry about things. Are you able to squeeze five or ten minutes of free writing, playful writing, into their school day? In schools that I know where there are regular opportunities for free writing, young people like writing, often love writing. And they learn, also, the ways in which writing can be their own, that writing can make you feel better.
So I send you the very best of wishes for the year ahead. Write often. Write for your own reasons. Be playful and tender. Allow the writing to bring you back to yourself. I hope, also, that you are able to find the space where children may write for their own purposes and that they learn what a good thing that is.
How about a five minute free write every day? Start with this month’s thirty writing prompts to break into the page, along with an idea from David Morley.