Writing from The Heart: In-Depth Writing Exercise 6: Gender Change

Writing from The Heart

"Writing from The Heart" is a workshop on creative writing, creative drawing, and creative drama. There are three available versions of this workshop: one for beginners on the secondary, tertiary, and graduate levels, and another for practitioners. A third version of this workshop is designed as an outreach program to disadvantaged and underserved audiences such as the disabled, the poor and the marginalized, victims of human trafficking, battered women and abused children, drug rehabilitation center residents, child combatants, children in conflict with the law, prisoners, and gang leaders. This third version incorporates creativity and problem awareness, conflict resolution, crisis intervention, trauma therapy, and peacemaking.

Monday, December 14, 2015

In-Depth Writing Exercise 6: Gender Change

The reason we are able to write from the multiple points of view of men, women, children, the aged, the disabled, the disadvantaged, the advantaged, and persons of different races, religions, and lifestyles is that we have been all of those in previous lifetimes. Creative writing is a state in which, by drawing from the Unconscious and the Collective Unconscious, a writer is capable of extreme memory recall and able to draw from experiences beyond his/her childhood and further back in time.

During the creative writing process, a writer is "possessed" by a particular character not because he/she is actually "possessed" by an alien spirit but because that character and its personality already comprise a facet in the writer's subconscious--because he/she has already been that character in the past.

Do this exercise for two hours when you are completely alone and nothing can possibly disturb you, whether physically or electronically.

Focus on a real or fictional character of the opposite sex and, in your mind, allow that character to gradually take over you. The best way to do this is to step into the bathroom as that person would and take a shower, allowing the water to shape your body as that character's body. Just feel it. Go through the movements that character would while taking a bath.

You need not dress up as a transvestite after that. Simply walk around the room--either wrapped in a towel or naked--and look around you through the eyes of that character. Contemplate issues your character would contemplate. Note that, at this point, you are taking your identification with that character from the level of physicality to the level of your mind and your heart.

Move about the room as that character would. Speak out aloud as that character would.

Now sit down and write something--anything--keeping that character's mindset and heartset within you, in order to immediately apply the exercise to creative writing. If you can't think of anything to write, here are a few suggestions:

--a love letter
--a day in the life of your character
--your character's favorite things
--your character's history (The easiest way is to begin with "My name is X. I am Y years old. I am a Z..."
--a brief curriculum vitae.

After everything, don't forget to go back to yourself and ground yourself!