How I Would Begin A Writing Practice That Breathes

on the soul of writing, a way to begin collaborating with it, and a thin place to claim as an entry point

To write oneself out from the void of dulled creativity is a slow tangle with The Erotic. It is not a thing of technicality, of perfect grammar, of flawless editing. It is not a conference table where we lay our words in neat piles and look for ways to organize them well. It is not a contest of synonyms, metaphors, and structure. And it is not, despite what it sounds like I’m saying, an abandonment of the communal art form of writing.

I say this in every Writer’s Soul class I lead. I say it in conversations with friends and strangers. I’ll say it to you now. You are a writer.

Oh, and yes, of course. You aren’t trained, you can’t find a way to make words flow together like honey, you have yet to see the world the way poets do, you sit down to write and nothing happens, you could never write like [insert name], your brain doesn’t work that way, it’s been a very long time since you’ve tried, it’s not even worth the foolish attempt. Yes, I know. I hear it all the time, and I, in my own many low tides of creativity, have said it to the ceiling after midnight. A stalled out pen, a cramped hand, a dam between my soul and my mind. I have banged my fist against the door, held my breath in the dark, and lamented with heartbroken certainty that writing would never find its way back to me again. Perhaps it never truly had to begin with.

This is the land of poets, of writers, of artists. We have walked so many heartsick circles out here, the ground has taken the shape of a labyrinth. We have dug so hard for new wells of inspiration, great canyons have formed against their will. We have carved headstones for our craft, bundled our muse in graveclothes, and lowered what we love into the earth. To be a writer is to (sometimes more often than not) be utterly convinced you have never written anything impactful, stirring, or sacred in your life.

So you, the writer, have gathered all your shitty first drafts and unfinished poems. You’ve fed them whole to a backyard fire pit. You’ve leaned into the wind and let black smoke flood your lungs. You’ve grieved, if you’ve felt anything at all. Sometimes, the numb drone of detaching, disintegrating inspiration has left you mercifully unhinged.

And yet after some time, and always miraculously, the muse has shrugged off your carefully bound white linen, grunted in irritation as they hoist themself from a premature grave. Groaning, stretching, rolling their stiff neck, the muse has turned just slightly to meet your eye. A direct gaze over a now bare shoulder, they have sighed some version of, “Are you fucking kidding me? Am I not allowed to rest? Stop digging graves.”

The thing is, impactful writing is not simply a proficient skill or a perfected tool. It isn’t something some people are great at and others are not. Its purpose isn’t even to be good. This kind of writing exists to carry us somewhere else, to tell a more nuanced and complicated truth, to return humanity to an exiled part of ourselves and one another. And I know this because ‘non-writers’ have read me their work at the end of a class and I have caught my breath, held my hand to my chest, and thought, ‘Oh now that one is alive.”

The larger, far more vulnerable question is, do you want to write? Have you read something that knocks the air out of you, hooks some long forgotten part of your heart, evokes longing in you, makes you wonder if you are in fact a romantic or a revolutionary or a vital piece of Nature? Have your fingers twitched in response, a dormant part of you whispering a suppressed hunger to be capable of writing even just one line like that?

Yes?

Then you have been summoned or touched by the soul of something wild and alive.

Writing is a being. It is a soul of sorts, an entity that swirls, flows, ebbs, and breaches the banks of the world. It is one of the oldest forms of magic - poetry itself first discovered and embodied by Enheduanna, a priestess of an early goddess. It is so powerful that ancient Norse mysticism equated poetry with the wisdom and skill of the Volvä, the seeress and traveler of spirit realms. Those poems became maplines through the very intricate, complicated realms of the soul.

Writing is an Inner Territory practice, a way of exploring the landscape of our unique souls. We write doorways for our exiles, initiation for our shadows, peace for our monsters. When we begin to move this way, we do not wait for the perfect opening line or the full-bodied metaphor to arrive whole and clear. No, no, no, we start from any entry point, led by sensation rather than sight. We remove limits, impossibilities, and socially acceptable guardrails. We write without overthinking, without editing too soon, without thinking about how someone else would say it. We give way to the eternal, liberatory, transformative soul of writing, letting it swoop and rise and dive through us, a nebulous being.

Writing then becomes no different than any other healing, metamorphic experience. In the universal way of writers, poets, artists, and creatives, we find ourselves still trailing grave dirt, following the muse to the edge of the universe, breathing fresh air into every hurting, dying, wasting thing we pass. And, when we write, not from technicality but from soul, we too become something ancient, transformed, new.

If you want to write, if you want to explore the terrain of your soul, if you are moved by powerful writing, you are a writer. It has already found you. The soul of writing has begun to tap against your ribs, asking for access to the vast landscape of your gorgeous soul.

I, for one, would challenge everything that convinces you not to even try. I would set down the hyperanalytic observation of how you express yourself. I would simply start opening doors, letting air flow through the house of your body without restriction. I would welcome the shittiest first drafts, even the really awful first couple of drafts. I would read more. I would keep a record of words that intrigue you. I would consciously enter spaces that are not set up to critique how or where you begin. I would avoid formulaic writing (just for now - there are so many great teachers who can help you grow your craft, but first you need to start forming it from soil and breath and sensation). I would start tossing commas and em dashes like confetti. I would lean against the restrictions of what a writer should do. I would lean so hard I create a thin place, just wide enough to slip through. I would practice prioritizing the sensation of floating downriver while I write. I would just… start.

Maybe you could begin with the most vulnerable statement, the one that feels out of reach or not for you. Maybe you write it down before you say it out loud (but then you absofuckinglutely say it out loud).

I am a writer.

And those words become the first spell you cast, the first door you open. I don’t care how you do it, but baby, let the air in. Wait for the muse to lift their sleepy head, unclench your jaw, release your shoulders. Start moving in any direction.

WRITER’S SOUL CLASS HAPPENING THIS SATURDAY

The queer, Black, feminist poet who wrote us all into new realms of reckoning, creation, and existence.

We are here, finally, to honor the life, the work, the soul, and the legacy of Audre Lorde. Her work has deeply influenced the exploration we do within Wild Soul, and it is a terrific honor to sit with the soul of her writing in a direct and new way.

Come prepared to hear the story of her life, to tap into the heart of her writing voice, and to follow her lead as we lean into a new style of writing. This, like all of our writing classes, is not about technicality, grammar, or perfection. This class is a journey inward to a unique landscape in the Inner Territory. It is an invitation to dive deeper, to open wider, and to use your powerful voice in a way that has been courageously modeled for you.

Saturday, June 28 | 11 am PST | $30

*This class is open to everyone regardless of Wild Soul membership, but the recording is only available within Wild Soul, so live attendance is highly encouraged