Laura Deutsch - Writing from the senses : 59 exercises to ignite creativity and revitalize your writing

ABOUT THE BOOK

The sensory details that infuse our everyday experiencethe smell of a favorite dish cooking, the texture of a well-worn coat, hearing a song that reminds you of a person or a time in your lifecan be used to add richness and spark to what we write. Whether you are a professional writer (or want to be one) or someone who just enjoys writing for the joy of self-expression, Writing from the Senses will show you how to tap into an endless source of engaging material, using your senses as prompts. Laura Deutsch explores all kinds of writingfrom memoir and journaling to fiction, journalism, poetry, travel, food writing, and more.

LAURA DEUTSCH is a writer, editor, and teacher based in Mill Valley, California. She began teaching writing in 1974 at the University of California at Berkeley and has subsequently taught classes and workshops at San Francisco State University, Book Passage bookstore, Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, and in Arezzo, Italy. For the past fifteen years, her classes have focused on personal essay and memoir, writing from the senses, writing as a spiritual practice, and how to get into print. Lauras personal essays, feature stories, and travel pieces have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco magazine, More magazine, Time Out, Mademoiselle, and the Dallas Morning News. Her personal essays have been anthologized in several collections, including I Should Have Stayed Home; Best Womens Travel Writing 2011; and Leave the Lipstick, Take the Iguana. Her commentary has aired on public radio.

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Writing from the Senses

59 Exercises to Ignite Creativity and Revitalize Your Writing

Laura Deutsch

SHAMBHALA Boston & London 2014

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.shambhala.com

2014 Laura Deutsch

Cover design by Jim Zaccaria

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Deutsch, Laura.

Writing from the senses: 59 exercises to ignite creativity and revitalize your writing / Laura Deutsch.First edition.

pages cm

eISBN 978-0-8348-2912-1

ISBN 978-1-61180-044-9 (pbk.: acid-free paper)

1. Authorship. I. Title.

PN145.N49 2014

808.02dc23

2013006695

For my students, whose writing inspires me every day.

Contents

I AM SO GRATEFUL to family and friends who read my manuscript with care, providing encouragement, support, and valuable feedback. Special thanks go to my erudite, worldtraveling brother, Daniel Deutsch, who polished my Italian and gave me excellent ideas for the section on sound. To my sister, Margery Deutschshe is my perfect reader and offered great suggestions throughout the book. And with gratitude, to my trusted writing-editing-teaching buddy, Leslie Keenan. I feel fortunate to have you all in my circle.

I thank Susan Hall for her wonderful artwork at the beginning of each section, which adds so much to the book.

Thanks also to those who contributed to Writing from the Senses, knowingly or not. Allison Post and Jeri Metz shared expertise on subjects as varied as breathing and gardening. Edward Espe Brown taught me about cooking and meditation. Erica Kaplan read the entire manuscript just for fun. And love and thanks to my parents, Edith and Enoch Deutsch, for the rich life they gave me and for all the great writing material that has come out of the experience.

Deepest thanks to friends and students who generously contributed their writing to this book: Laura Bachman, Debra Baker, Kathy Barr, Valorie Beer, Rita Bral, Gina Catena, Margery Deutsch, Sandra Gatten, Rachael Grossman, Susan Hall, Georgia Hesse, Jeanee Hoffman, Brian Johns, Sheila-Merle Johnson, Carolyn Kellogg, Laurie McAndish King, Erin Kinikin, Karen Leland, Jessica Levine, Gale Lipsyte, Rachel Mc-Clelland, Julia McNeal, Anne Milner, Cynthia Miller Moore, Patricia Morgan, Sandhya Nankani, Basya Petnick, Miriam Phillips, Susan Richard, Jane Rollins, Adrienne Sciutto, Elizabeth Shreeve, Marilyn Steele, Anne-Christine Strugnell, Laurie Szujewska, Wendy Thieler, Catherine Toldi, Mary Van Voorhees, Eli Weiner, Janice Westerling, and Laurel Wilson.

A WHIFF OF A CLOVE cigarette catapults me back to a restaurant shack in Indonesia, suspended over the water on rickety wooden stilts.

The sound of a song from the sixties elicits memories of my first teen kiss.

A basket of cooking utensils evokes a students long-forgotten story of learning how to cook as a child in postwar Belgium.

Our material surrounds us, through memory, imagination, and sensory experiences. From the South of France to the south of India, I have kept notes and written stories. The sights, sounds, tastes, scents, and textures provided material, whether I was describing, musing, imagining, or writing a memory evoked by my surroundings. While it may seem easier to write about exotic places, Ive discovered I need not travel halfway around the world to find subjects that inspire my writing.

Writing from the Senses will show you how to tap into an endless source of engaging material, using your senses to develop imagery and details that bring writing alive. With practice youll recognize the prompts that your daily life provides and use them to trigger your individual stories, from memoir and fiction to travel writing and poetry. Beyond craft, this book can enhance your experience in a wide range of writing, from journaling and journalism to meditative and therapeutic writing.

The techniques I describe and the exercises at the end of each chapter work so well that many students in my workshops have polished the pieces that resulted from these exercises and had them published in magazines, newspapers, books, and online. But while parts of Writing from the Senses discuss how to hone your work, this book is not focused on performance or the creation of a product. It is about being present and trusting the creative process.

Before I figured this out, my writing practice was much like my typical yoga workout. Id pull a chair up to the TV and sip a cup of Peets Coffee Garuda Blend while I watched Lilias do a half-spinal twist on PBSs Lilias, Yoga and You. Shed stretch. Id sip. Eventually, I got out of my chair and began a consistent yoga practice. My flexibility, strength, and balance improvedas did my attitude and sense of well-being.

And so it is with writing. Writers write. We dont just think about writing, dream, meditate, read, talk, or watch television programs about it. We put pen to paper, fingertips to keyboard. Once I began a consistent writing practice, my sense of well-being, writing flexibility, and strength all improved. As with a yoga practice, the writing exercises in this book can help you get out of your head, into your body, and fully express who you are.

Working out in this writers gym, you can tone and develop the muscles for awareness and sensory detail. Soon, even your freewrites may be richly layered without conscious effort; youll strengthen your ability to show, not tell. If you decide to go back and edit, you may add more images, similes, and dialogue, choose lively verbs, and develop your characters quirky behaviors. This book will help you do that, too.