The shape of writing and secrets
Something to keep in your pocket
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Dear friends,
Spring - or is it summer? - has finally arrived here in North Yorkshire. It has been a glorious sunny weekend. I took my notebook for a walk - to escape all the dust and hammering. A sparrow hawk made slow circles high above my head.
In our Writing Together live Zoom session this week, I shared this passage from Carl Phillips’ beautiful book on writing:
‘Writing is intuitive, personal, private, and must ultimately be self-directed. So too with a writing practice, which can maybe be likened to the invisible shapes we each leave in the air behind us as we move from one space to the next one. Those shapes are unique to each of us. There’s no right or wring shape — just our own. Or maybe the air that contains those shapes is analagous to a writing practice, the context within and from which we leave behind us these records — the writing, that is — of having been here. Who can say?’
- Carl Phillips - My Trade is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing p.67
We talked about writing as ‘the invisible shapes we each leave in the air behind us as we move from one space to the next one.’
How I love this image!
We asked ourselves what shapes we would like to make or inhabit. I was so inspired by what others wrote and shared from this starting-point.