Your Relationship with Writing

By Lorna Dawson

At the start of this year, I would never have stood up in front of twenty eleven to fifteen year olds and told them to “draw writing as a person” and then write to the person that they created.

So what changed?

I have written almost all my life, to the extent that I’d “write” on the walls behind the sofa in crayons when I could barely walk and was small enough to fit in the gap. But it never struck me to ask myself why I write …. until this year.

It wasn’t something I decided to do by myself. In all honesty, the only reason I started reflecting and interrogating my own relationship to writing, was because it was set as homework for a module on teaching creative writing in schools. But that self-reflection was mind-blowing. It showed me what I thought writing was to me and how that hindered what deep down I wanted writing to be for me. It made me consider why I valued certain types of writing and what I used writing for. Most importantly, it allowed me to be open to new ideas of what writing could be.

For me, writing is genuinely a means of self-expression; it’s my way of making sense of the world, it my way of screaming at the world. You can track that, honest. I write songs to explain how I feel about other people, I write weird psychological thrillers to try to convey how I feel about myself, I write fantasy to explore what I see as problems with the world. I don’t think I’d have been able to conduct a workshop that intended to encourage young people to explore their relationship with and the possibilities of writing if I hadn’t gone through this reflective process, and if I didn’t see how fundamental writing is to my ability to express myself.

In all honesty, I think it’s something that every writer should ask themselves, what is your relationship with writing? Because you may surprise yourself. And I think it’s only by understanding exactly what that relationship is, that you can allow it to grow, mature, develop and go wild!! And I think it’s an even better idea to start this as early in your writing relationship as possible. So that’s why I turned up at Trinity Catholic School in Leamington Spa, at the horrific time of 8.45am, to conduct a workshop to explore your relationship with writing.

Having just said that exploring my relationship with writing changed my perspective of it, I still went in with a fixed idea of what writing is for me. But I came out the other end of three hours with a new perspective.

Leading the workshop, actually going round and helping the young adults, discussing their ideas, exposed me to the myriad different ways in which other people relate to writing. You can learn so much about your own creative practice by seeing how other people do it differently. Seeing a new perspective that you may never have thought of gives the perfect opportunity to develop your existing preconceptions and widen your own creative practice, extending your creative potential.

You know what would be a really cool experiment? If every few months, or every few years, you did this exercise … You write a list of what writing is for you, you create a character out of those words, and then you write to that character, about that character or as that character. You’d have the materials for an amazing story; the epic romance, mystery, adventure of your relationship with writing. But you know what the best part is? There’d always be another chapter.