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WRITING THE NATURALWAY: GABRIELLE RICO

A mind that is very sensitive to forms as such and is aware of them beyond the common senserequirements for classification of things, is apt to use its images metaphorically, to exploit theirpossible significance for the conception of remote or intangible ideas.

-Susanne Langer in Problems of Art.Nature operates by profusion. Of the nearly infinite number of seeds that fall to earth, only afraction take root to become trees, five thousand or so drones exist solely to ensure thefertilization of one queen bee; similarly, human beings engaged in the creative processexplore an astronomical number of possible patterns before settling on an idea.

Too many of us get stuck because we think we should know where to start and which ideasto develop. When we find we dont, we become anxious and either force things or quit. Weforget to wonder, leaving ourselves pen to what might come. Wondering means itsacceptable to not know and it is the natural state at the beginning of all creative acts.

Clustering blocks the critical censorship of the Sign mind and thus undercuts tension,anxiety and resistance. Clustering unblocks generates inspiration and insight. Clusteringis a self-organizing process. As seemingly random words spill out around a center, you willsee patterns forming until a moment comes when suddenly you sense a focus for writing.Clustering gives you access to the patterns and associations of your Design mind. It providesyou with choices from which to formulate and develop your thought and a focus meaningfulenough to impel you to write. Facts or words in isolation are meaningless until they arebrought into relationship by a consciousness that can create relationships.

Should you experience resistance, go through the motions of drawing circles and lines

around a stimulus word. Relax and doodle, letting the circles and lines shape a pleasingpattern. That nonlinear act breaks down your resistance and you will find yourself filling inthose inviting empty circles with the associations that are inevitably triggered by the nucleusword. By its very nature, the circle centers and focuses; circling your mindspills andconnecting them to webs seems natural.

An image is an internal whole in the minds eye, complete with all the sensationssurrounding it, full of meaning for the writer. Images have strong visual significance, butthey also evoke the feel or sound or smell or taste of things. Images are the constant in allnatural writing for they heighten or intensify the implicit, often becoming interlockingpatterns of related images resonant with meaning.

She went to the fence and sat there, watching the gold clouds fall to pieces and go in immense,rose-colored ruin towards the darkness. Gold flamed to scarlet, like pain in intense brightness.Then the scarlet ran to rose, and rose to crimson, and quickly the passion went out of the sky. Allthe world was dark gray.

- D. H. Lawrence in Sons and Lovers.

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