Looking Out My Window: Memories and Handwriting

Julia Cameron has been an invaluable guide in my writing adventures. This statement struck me initially and continues to inform me.

We store memories in our bodies. We store passion and

heartache. We store joy, moments of transcendent peace. If we are to

access, these if we are to move into them and through them, we must

enter our bodies to do so. . . . .

Entering our bodies, we enter our hearts. “Heart” is

where the “art” is. This is why writing by hand, even when it

seems clumsy and inconvenient, can lead us into a deeper truth

than our flying fingers at the keys.+

In response to Julia’s writings, I purchased my first fountain pen in years in February of 1999 and began doing all my first draft writing by hand—morning pages, journaling, sermons, and all writing. That little Sheaffer pen now is the first of many. I even carry a fountain pen in my pocket. All writing gets done that way.

Cameron’s counsel has proven spot on. The latent energy associated with memories gets actualized onto the page through the pen in hand. Memories previously lost come to life. Even long-ago academic insights dust themselves off and crawl onto the page of academic writing. Spiritual insights crystalize in sermon writing.

One practical way to explore this insight—write an anger or grief letter to someone with no intent to share it. I’ve found that writing an anger letter and then burning it gets the energy outside my body. What gets shared with the person, if anything, then can be done with much less of an energy charge because the writing has dispersed that energy.

So, the keyboard comes second. But, even then, revisions get scribed onto the printed draft pages via the old reliable fountain pen.

More on this topic later.

+Julia Cameron, The Right to Write: An invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life. (New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 1998), p. 58.