There are two nervous people in the room. Isn’t this always the way it starts? Client and tutor. The client (let’s call her Louise) and the tutor, (Sarah). Louise is writing a novel, and is stuck on a very important scene. A sex scene between the two protagonists, one of the hardest things to write for any writer.
Sarah is a published novelist and poet, who has been teaching creative writing for 20 years, as well as being a Focusing Teacher.
Louise is nervous about having to write things she really doesn’t want to write, and the scene being icky, cliché, functional but not emotional. Sarah is nervous about not being able to put across the ingredients needed for a sex scene in an invitational and inspirational way.
Sarah has a long list – lists are always good – of questions to ask about the characters, who they are, where they are, when they are, who they are to each other at this stage of the story, what do they look like, what do they believe about themselves. These are all very helpful ways to enable Louise to ground the piece of writing, and stop it being too abstract.
Talking about sex is hard, writing about sex is possibly even harder. It is important to write what you love, to love what you write, to enjoy your characters and relish their journeys. We can have complicated and multi-faceted relationships with sex and it’s important to honour yourself as a writer.
Sarah offered various options which might speak to Louise of connection and emotionality and a way of entering into it more playfully as a writer, and more meaningfully for the characters, in a sensitive and accepting way. Focusing helps us express difficult feelings, ideas, concepts, experiences in new and fresh ways.
Playfulness and meaning, and permission for whatever Louise really wanted to write, for that to be OK, and not to have to fulfil anyone else’s expectations. I love this about focusing, the permission giving, the creating meaning, the playfulness and curiosity, the gentleness of it all.
Due to this session, Louise fell in love with her characters again. She discovered new things about them she didn’t know before. And she deepened her craft of writing.
In Focusing terms, what happened for Louise was a sense of sparkling sparks of creativity, like hands imitating sparklers, that upward sense of energy and freshness flowing like a fountain of sparkles. And for Sarah, imagine the hands coming downwards, palm down, from head to stomach, a sense of deep satisfaction.
Louise had started off being not only separated from, but also alienated from her sense of creativity, feeling like she ‘had’ to write this scene in a particular way which was anathema to her. And Sarah enabled a debunking of assumptions, offered permission for the writing to happen in a beautiful and more crafted way, so the profound moment the character needed to experience, and the beauty of the story could unfold, and a wondrous synergy occurred between the writer and the story.
I love this. I live for moments like this.
This is a true story. I was the tutor. This happened with one of my clients.
You can find out more about my work with focusing and writing here: www.bethanyrivers.com
by Bethany Rivers
