Getting Help to Figure Out What You Want to Say

How conversations help.

Barbara: In our last post we were talking about how writers often have trouble figuring out what they really want to say.

Elizabeth: Too true. I offered, as an example, having been lost in an intractable mental fog during my very first writing class. I’d had a simple story to tell, but I could not figure out what I wanted to say with it. Our excellent teacher, Gail, made an effort to help, and my immediate response was to find fault with her suggestion. Nevertheless, her words broke through my circular thinking and set me on the right path. I’d really like to understand how this worked.

Barbara: My first thought is that being in a writing class means having the courage to allow other people to read your early drafts. You let others in. You let them see writing that you know is not good. You allow yourself to be vulnerable.

This was possible in your case, in part, because Gail had established a relationship of trust with the group. She must have seen that you were struggling. So she engaged you in a back and forth conversation to help you find the point of your story.

Elizabeth: Every week Gail would ask me, “But what is the point you want to make?” Try as I might, I could not figure out what she meant by “the point”!

The 17 members of our class all came with different projects and skills, and, like me, also seemed to have certain areas of weakness they just couldn’t manage to overcome. For instance, one member of the group would resolve any drama as soon as it appeared in her writing, as though she couldn’t tolerate the tension. Another described the physical appearance of her characters, but who they were as people escaped her.

We used to laugh together at the blindness we had to our own difficulties. As I saw it, these sorts of obstacles must have been driven by something deeply personal in each of us, something of which we were largely unaware.

created using Night Cafe Studio

Barbara: So, these are not problems with writing craft but with things like figuring out how to tolerate intense emotions that come up in your characters or recognizing that other people have inner lives that motivate them, which can be used to drive a narrative.

Elizabeth: My essay was centered on our family trip to Belize and its surprise ending. I’d set out to use the story to illustrate an opinion piece about how commercialization was ruining travel. However, the story itself demonstrated exactly the opposite! Rather than face this reality, I got caught up in my ambivalent feelings about the trip’s having been a packaged tour.

Gail proposed that I limit the piece to the idea that “I wished to travel where tourists didn’t go.” I quibbled with her description of my wish and ignored the main thrust of her suggestion, which was that I “limit” the piece to only one idea.

Barbara: At the time, it sounds like you didn’t consider her suggestion at a deep level. Using a tennis analogy, you smashed the ball back from the net, rather than letting it bounce and returning it with a carefully considered swing.

Elizabeth: Yes, exactly! And yet, within the week, it (finally!) dawned on me to simply delete my lofty opinions on travel. Immediately, the fog cleared and what emerged was a comic, self-mocking account of my actual experience — that felt exactly right. Somehow, Gail’s advice allowed me to silence the part of me that was driven to pontificate.

Barbara: So, the question you have is, what happened? Something changed in you…in your thinking. Clearly, the conversation with Gail was key. She was likely reflecting back to you what came through in the writing… Plus, she was informed by whatever you said in the group about the piece. She gave you a lot more information to process. You now had data from a sophisticated reader in response to your essay.

Being in conversation with another person about your writing forces you to start thinking and talking about that writing in a different way. Because now there’s another person in the picture…another mind… It’s no longer just you in conversation with yourself.

But, to be deeply helpful you can’t just be in conversation with any other person. You have to feel that the coach is trying to help you to write the piece you want to write. And you want constructive feedback not judgemental attitudes, which are destructive to the trust that is essential to being open and vulnerable.

We’ll never know precisely how your “neural connections” changed as your brain processed Gail’s words. But, I would suggest that time was an important factor. Day and night, you were trying to undo the bind you were in.

Eventually you did oust the compulsive opinion-giver. You made peace with having loved the family trip, even though it was packaged. And you were able to make fun of yourself, which is a very complex ability involving insight, perspective on one’s self and on how one is seen by others. Quite a positive outcome!

Being a writing coach isn’t easy. There is so much to understand besides craft: the writing process itself, helping writers to unravel their internal knots and to figure out what they really want to say — and all without stepping into the role of “therapist.”

Elizabeth: But it actually does sound like therapy.

Barbara: Well, coaching is and isn’t like therapy. I’m sure there are diverse opinions about this, but I think there is overlap between being a writing teacher and being a talk therapist, because both involve working to help the inner person express themselves. `

On the other hand, as a teacher, you have to limit your role to helping the “student” with a particular project or body of knowledge. You are not there to make diagnoses. Your job is not to help with serious mental health issues or to ease any of the many other types of suffering that people live with. You do not have permission to “ask anything.”

But what is similar is the relationship of trust in which an effective conversation may occur. There is the encouragement to put thoughts into words…the wondering together…inquiring…expanding on what’s been said…suggesting a deeper look… And a mental alchemy takes place as the topic of these conversations is processed over time.

That’s what you experienced!

Elizabeth: The Belize essay seemed fairly superficial, psychologically speaking. Even so, the solution turned out to be deeply satisfying. Resolving the essay was a first step in figuring out how to use a story in itself to make a point. In other words, “show don’t tell”!

Barbara: Writing coaches are helping you give birth to your essay, memoir, thriller, romance… They are helping you to clear the fog — to surmount your particular obstacles to writing…and to find the words for what you want to say.

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