Writing with Rox weekly prompt—"And what I really want to tell you..."

 I'll never forget the first time I dropped this prompt on a client during a one-on-one session in the summer of 2008. I was struggling a bit with depression but not quite sure what was going on, what the root was. So here I was with this client at Starbucks in St Louis Park, warming up by writing about, I believe, what we feared most in life. 

Typically my one-on-one sessions begin with an intuitive writing warm-up or writing meditation to get out of our heads, see what happens on the page, and then, if we wish, we share.  The prompt was likely "I'm afraid..." and we went from there, listing and free forming about what we fear: planes, centipedes, apathy, etc. For some reason, mid-write, I suggested we begin the next thought with "and what I really want to tell you..." and follow that. 

What came out of my pen and then my mouth to share was quite unexpected. I knew it was true...I just hadn't yet wrapped the words around it. But there in ink, the page was my mirror.  Thereafter my life and my writing life were forever changed.  My client's face reflected this and even though I tried for a quick recovery it was too late. "Oh dear, " he said, leaning back in his chair and stretching his arms overhead, smugly locking his hands behind his head. "I'm not sure how to respond to that." 

"Let's write," I said and so we wrote again.


I have a handful of prompts I offer when doing Intuitive Writing workshops, groups, individual sessions, etc, which I have been accumulating over the years of doing this. I don't want to say I "channel" them exactly (I'm not quite there, yet), but these prompts just sort of come to me in the middle of a session/class, etc. I've discovered that offering these prompts mid-sentence can change the direction and flow of the writing, serving as a sort of "check in" to the writing process, asking "are you here now? Are you present? Are you writing what you want to be writing?" 

Sometimes a fresh/mindful prompt mid-sentence can bring new life into a piece that seems to be hanging out on the surface, or distracted by being too much in its head,  a bit removed somehow. If you're writing, say, about cheese and you get hung up on what kind of cheese or what country it's from or where to get the really good cheese, you might get stuck because you are thinking too much or trying to get it right. That's when a good intuitive writing prompt might save the day. Intuitive Writing is never about getting it right. Or wrong. It's just about being with what is. But we forget how to be with what is.  A lot of time we are thinking about what was or what's to come. So: be with cheese. Linger with cheese.

For example, the prompt "and what I really want to tell you..." (variations are "what I really want to say;" or "the truth is...", etc). So say you are writing about cheese and trying to describe the perfect cheese from the perfect European country and then you get blocked because you have moved away from your truth and into the land of the head—let's call it Headland. Very quickly you have gone from Heartland to Headland. But if you are suddenly to write "and what I really want to say..." you are free to then say "I really have no idea about cheese and it smells like feet. And the truth is I've never liked cheese. I've tried to like it, for the sake of others, but the whole cheese thing makes me ill, like the time I was forced to eat it but then I tried gouda cheese when I was married to a gay guy and that changed my life and now I like some cheese and not other cheese, but cheese whiz..." etc. 

It won't always create on-the-spot poetry, or life changes, etc, but most of the time it will. For sure it will take you/open you to where you need to be on the page (and in life). The page is your mirror. 

The other thing about this that's so cool is that introducing a fresh prompt mid-sentence is that it also changes the pitch of the writing. We are sonant beings. We are rhythmic beings. The vibrations and waves of sound that we experience internally and externally inform our every move, thought, sensation. So if we introduce a new pitch to a piece of writing, it will naturally invite us to expand where we are, usually deeper into truth. Or maybe just over into truth, but over can be deeper. We are staying with what is on the page, just seeing what more of it there is. What's undercheese, you say? What's deeper than cheese?  Whatever it is, it's infinite. Changing the pitch means any prompt will suffice, say, "and another thing..." or "and what I really, really want to tell you..." etc.

Your Prompt

So try it like this: Start with "and what I really want to say..." and then in the next line say, "and the truth is..." and then try "and what I really want to tell you," and then maybe, "and what I really, really want to tell you..." and so on and on. Intuitive Writing is sort of like one big-ass long-ass run-on sentence. You just keep going, stay with it, and fly... Don't think: write. If you're not writing, you're thinking too much. Go. And then stay exactly where you are.