scent, emotion, and memory
weekly story work exercise
If you’re new here, Story Work is the name of my current book-in-progress. It describes a process of reflecting, 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.
The weekly Story Work topics cover universal life themes with references from literature, philosophy, science, and spirituality; offering perspectives that spark ideas for personal growth and creative expression.
Paid subscribers receive Story Work exercises every Sunday night at 8 pm et. Read on for a few updates and a preview of the weekly exercise.
Hi Friends,
Today we have our weekly Story Work exercise, but first I want to remind you about our upcoming session Writing to Heal: An Expressive Writing Workshop. This is the first of four quarterly workshops we’ll be having this year. It’s free for paid subscribers and open to everyone for a $40 drop-in fee.
In this two-hour Zoom workshop, we will explore self-healing and community-healing through writing and storytelling. You will learn my approach to the expressive writing method, a well-researched practice that leads to creative expansion and healing narratives for adversity, trauma, grief, and loss.
Writing to heal is a workshop for writers who want to:
+ Learn how to explore complicated experiences for storytelling in an emotionally safe way
+ Process hard things while improving mental and physical wellness
+ Write to heal for themselves and to share stories that help others heal
+ Lay the groundwork for an ongoing, restorative writing practice
+ Find a deeper level of self-expression, creative courage and confidence through writing
Please note that I am not a licensed mental health professional, and this workshop is for creative purposes only.
Okay, let’s get into our weekly exercise.
Scent, Emotion, and Memory
First, a quick review. Our current theme is the five senses, which we are exploring as a way to practice mindful writing, a creative practice that nurtures attention and well-being. When it comes to storytelling, by focusing on the five senses, we also bring our words to life in vivid ways for ourselves and our readers.
The more mindful we are in our daily lives, the more we notice how our bodies react to our physical environment, and the more we can bring that mindfulness into our writing.
Do you consider yourself to be an observant person? What sensory observations come most naturally to you? Which ones do you tend not to notice?
I consider myself pretty inattentive when it comes to visual observation. As a writer, and also just as a human who desires to soak up as much life as I can for as long as I can, I’ve often considered my struggle with visual memory to be a detriment to my art.
I rarely remember the details of what someone was wearing or what the room or building that I just left looked like. I’m more likely to remember how the person or environment made me feel. Maybe this is at least partially due to living in my head for so many years, dissociated from the present moment, experiencing the world through kaleidoscope of my thoughts and feelings.