Getting Inspired @ Blog School: The Power of “I”

I’ve recently started attending what I call Blog School, a regular workshop run by PublicityShip in Perth, to help new bloggers develop their skills.

Yesterday the focus was on improving our blogs by engaging in writing every day.

It was a challenging hour to put it mildly.

While I love to write, the assignment was less about constructing a piece of inspiring prose and more about lubricating the connection between our head and our hand.

The task was to write non-stop for five minute intervals about anything.

Anything!

There was no topic and according to the lovely Julia who ran the session, grammar, punctuation and even the simple art of making sense were to be abandoned.

While I looked at her in disbelief (my brain frantically searching for a topic - any topic!) a frightening vision rose before my eyes….

The stream-of-consciousness technique!

It immediately took me back to reading James Joyce’s Ulysses at university - the last time words had messed with my head and an experience I had happily blocked out…

The Struggle to Not Make Sense

As a technical writer and former English teacher the task was initially torturous.

While the rest of the group quickly got underway, filling pages of their pads (nothing pops a sweat like the sound of other people’s turning pages!) I was almost immediately struck by hand-cramp.

This is a new illness for me. Writer’s block I’m familiar with and I’ve developed lovely little techniques to bop it on the head. But the unexpected and totally uncontrolled spasm that causes you to grip and release your pen as if you are wielding a hand pump was totally alien.

Julia fed us phrases to stimulate the process:

• I remember …
• I know…
• I don’t know…
• I am…
• I want…
• I don’t want…
• I feel…

My head grabbed each phrase like a life preserver and my hand gouged them into the paper.

Why wasn’t it working? What was wrong? (Everything! Everything, my head screamed. The grammar, the syntax, the total lack of a theme!)

I laboured on, trampling and hacking through the English language, but then something changed…

Confronting Myself

I don’t think I passed into another dimension - and I certainly didn’t suddenly find myself strolling the streets of Dublin in the early 1900s - but all that use and abuse of the word “I” seemed to push a button.

The words began to trip across the paper and I suddenly couldn’t stop writing about me!

All the scaffolding of the writing process - the careful structuring, the weaving of syntax, the use of parody and allusion - toppled over and I just looped and skipped through a kaleidoscope of personal images and impressions.

One moment I was writing about my grand-parents, the next I was comparing myself to a badly-tilting fence…

As I read back over my ramblings in the break (while massaging my aching hand) I realised that while a lot of it was white noise, there were glimmerings of personal insight.

I actually found myself wanting to read more about me!

Dot Dot Dot…

Luckily we weren’t required to share our efforts with the group and I’ll not bore you with my strangled prose here. After all, creating meaning was not the purpose of the exercise!

What I did take away with me from the session - other than a notebook bulging with scribble - were the following lessons:

1. Writing doesn’t always have to be manufactured
2. People enjoy reading personal information
3. Being overly critical of yourself brings on a bad case of hand cramp
4. Disconnecting from writing rules produces copious amounts of writing
5. There is a lot of power in the use of the word “I”

So where to from here?

While I’m hardly a convert to stream-of-consciousness, I’m going to practice lubricating the connection between my hand and my brain and indulge myself in more meanderings about me.

You’ve been warned!

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