...automatic writing
(redirected from Free writing)Writing is a place where my voice is freed. It’s a place where I see things in a new light. It is in this place that I can see things, sometimes for the very first time. It’s a place that speaks my truth to me.
Words build the sentences of my life. Inside the sentences are hidden secrets, messages, signs, gut feelings. Many of these are benign, and though interesting, are of little consequence in the grand scheme of things. Others reveal the cancers, the cracks, the poison cup.
My writing emerges from my memory. I hold the memory in the crevices on my face, on the scars of my body and in the beating of my heart. When I locate it, a picture illuminates in my mind, and plays before me like a 3D movie. My brain sends words down my arm, past my wrist and into my hand and fingers. The dance begins.
I am taking dictation it seems, following the voice until the music finishes, and I sit down and read what I have written.
It is here I discover who I was. It is here I discover who I am.
Since I began writing this memoir, the structure of the work has changed from a linear narrative structure, to a multi-linear project. This has come about as a result of feedback from my peers, and also through intensified reading of other’s works.
Free writing exercises penned throughout my degree, have contributed a great deal to the writing of my work so far, and are easily adapted in a multi-linear structure such as the one I am using. One-line 'starters' have resulted in fully detailed chapters.
Free writing takes me to surprising and unexpected destinations where I never intended to be. This in turn has brought up characters and events that I never intended to include. For example there is one small scene at The Nest the children's home where my sister works when I am eleven, with a group of boys who stay there, that details a picture of sexual abuse. This scene was pretty much borne from free-writing and remains largely unedited and unchanged.
It is here I discover who I was. It is here I discover who I am.
Since I began writing this memoir, the structure of the work has changed from a linear narrative structure, to a multi-linear project. This has come about as a result of feedback from my peers, and also through intensified reading of other’s works.
Free writing exercises penned throughout my degree, have contributed a great deal to the writing of my work so far, and are easily adapted in a multi-linear structure such as the one I am using. One-line 'starters' have resulted in fully detailed chapters.
Free writing takes me to surprising and unexpected destinations where I never intended to be. This in turn has brought up characters and events that I never intended to include. For example there is one small scene at The Nest the children's home where my sister works when I am eleven, with a group of boys who stay there, that details a picture of sexual abuse. This scene was pretty much borne from free-writing and remains largely unedited and unchanged.
I have been lucky with the writing of this memoir to have alot of useful resources available to me, regarding research. I have made research trips up to the North Island to interview relevant characters and I intend to travel further afield to Australia in the coming months to gather material for the second part of the trilogy, which will focus mainly on the ten years that I lived in Australia.
I have a collection of letters I sent from Australia, that were kept and held, including some from the period where I was using IV drugs daily, which I currently use. I have pages of doctor's reports from a few years later in Australia, when I had an undiagnosed condition for two years and my weight plummeted to 45 kilograms.
I have three large volumes of file notes by ACC, and psychiatric reports. These have helpful in recalling my life events and chronology, but are even more useful to me in the writing of the third part of the trilogy, which takes the reader deeply into the world of mental illness - Post Trauamatic Stress Disorder, Bi Ploar Disorder, depression, anxiety, and suicide. It shows the swift transition from functional though flawed, to incapacitated and unstable. The experience of being medicated with various different psychiatric medications is visited.
When I write I like to recrate mood and atmosphere by listening to old records and music that has been familiar and relevant to my life. Everybody has a soundtrack.
These are all great stimuli, and a fantastic resource, but one of my greatest resources in this journey has been Facebook. It is the world's ultimate time machine...
But that is a story on it's own.
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