point of view: we contain multitudes
weekly story work exercise
This week, the Story Work exercise is open to all subscribers. If you’re new here, Story Work is the name of my current book-in-progress. It describes a process of reflection, reclaiming, and reimagining the stories of our lives. It involves looking at your life experiences as creative material that you have the power to shape. Paid subscribers receive Story Work exercises every Sunday night at 8 pm et.
Read on for a few updates and a preview of our weekly exercise.
On January 27 at 10 am et, the Inner Story Writing Circle will be joined by author Natalie Lue to discuss her book, The Joy of Saying No: A Simple Plan to Stop People Pleasing, Reclaim Boundaries, and Say Yes to the Life You Want. We’ll be discussing the book, her writing journey, and creative practice.
I’ve read other books about boundaries, but I was missing the deeper layers of why we people-please, how to heal the inner wounds that cause the behavior, and how to expand your nervous system to manage the uncomfortable feelings that come with taking your power back. Lue’s book is giving me meaning and self-understanding. In our session, Natalie will be answering questions about her book and her writing journey.
If you are not a member and would like to join us, you can purchase a copy of Natalie’s book (any format), email me proof of purchase, and I’ll send you the link to join us. Proof of purchase can be a photo of you with the book, a picture of your receipt, etc. You can also grab a copy from the library if you can access it that way.
we contain multitudes
Do you ever feel self-absorbed when you are writing about your life? There’s a lot of I…, I…, I…, right? ‘This is how I feel. This is my point of view. This is what I saw, heard, and experienced.’
Let me assure you, this self-exploration is necessary and we need to get comfortable with creating space for ourselves in this way.
However, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a juicy opportunity to explore your lived experience from different points of view to discover new truths, reveal blind spots and biases, and play with story meaning and impact. According to Creative Nonfiction, “…truth is not a fixed adage but a concept that shifts under our gaze, multifaceted, determined by whatever self or persona happens to be in charge at the moment.”
When you attach yourself to one point of view, you give yourself limitations and boundaries that restrict your creative vision. You suppress your curiosity and the clues it has to offer. You silence parts of yourself that deserve to be heard. In the words of Walt Whitman, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.”
Your creative urges are invitations to expand your point of view.
For example, I reached a point in my writing journey where I was tired of writing victim narratives. I was tired of talking about how sad and burdened I was. I exhausted the topic. I wrote about it in the first person and the third person. I wrote about it in poetry and prose, in blog posts and books. I began to believe that if I didn’t write about my pain, I’d have nothing else to write about. By continuing to beat the same drum, I was keeping myself stuck.
Story work is all about reimagining your life experiences with questions like: What else could this mean? What can I create from this? What am I overlooking? What else was going on beyond my point of view?
In storytelling, what we can’t see can add as much meaning to the story as what we can.
This is why a novelist might choose fiction to process personal experiences through their characters’ points of view. Or a poet might use symbolism to write from the perspective of an object or place.
A curious writer might play with point of view by channeling different moods and voices to explore the same topic. Let’s say you want to write about your divorce. You can reveal different dimensions of the truth through a funny short story vs. a somber essay vs. an informative how-to article.
By experimenting with different points of view, we liberate our imaginations and welcome new possibilities for our creative work and the rest of our lives, too.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be exploring different types of point of view in storytelling, and how we can experiment with them to develop our writing and discover new insights.
Exercise:
“Luke, you’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to… depend greatly on our own points of view.” — Obi-Wan Kenobi
Choose a topic that is often on your mind. Perhaps you choose a memory or situation that you’ve always looked at one way, a story that you’ve always told with a certain tone. Write about it from a different point of view than you normally do. Perhaps take a humorous approach to a serious topic, or take a serious approach to something silly or trivial. Write from a different mood or with a different audience in mind. Switch it up and see what new truths you stumble upon.
Feel free to share your thoughts, reflections, and discoveries from this exercise in the comments below!
