You know how to channel and you know how to love

Not a writer

At the start of a recent writing workshop, a few participants included a very, very common claim in their introductions: “I’m not a writer.”

I responded to the first couple of people with some loving (if dismissive) version of “pfffff. You’re talking nonsense.” I’d actually heard their writing before, so had proof. And even if I didn’t, I knew they were about to prove themselves wrong.

Still, as the “I’m not a writer” sentiment became contagious (as it often does). After a couple more said it, something in me shifted.

I started agreeing with them.

It’s true. That person isn’t a writer. Neither is that one. Neither am I.

We’re not writing, except physically. If someone walked into the room in the middle of an exercise, they would correctly say, “That group of people is writing.”

But what’s landing on the paper isn’t anything conjured, made up, made at all. It’s actually being received.

We’re not writing. We’re channeling.

I’ll just pause here to let some of readers decide they’re done reading and get on with their day. Kidding, kind of. In the great divide between mind and spirit that occurred somewhere in our history (the ironically named Enlightenment, was it?), channeling sadly got sorted into the bucket labelled “Poppycock.” So I wouldn’t be surprised if some folks are backing away slowly in this moment.

Really, though, all channeling is is tuning into something deeper, bigger, or extra-sensory, and communicating it into the here and now. Some very gifted people are indeed able connect with folks on other side, or beings from higher realms—which is a very real, sublimely beautiful, and deeply healing tool. It’s something I wish I had more facility in actually.

But in our writing circles, we engage in a different flavor of channeling: connecting to a truth that lives anywhere in time and space—our pasts, our intuition, nature, a memory, a hope—and giving it voice. Letting it spill onto the page.

In the workshop the other day, many who made the “I’m not a writer” claim followed up with, “... but I know there’s something in me to say.”

There was. They channeled it right on through, and it was gorgeous.

Competency v. expression

We tend to conflate the competency of writerliness—like, pretty much everything we were graded on in school—with the act of expression, which is simply moving energy through (and out of) our bodies using the technology of pen and paper.

You don’t need to have gotten As on your papers in school. You don’t even have to particulary like to write. You just need to put pen to paper, stir up the life force in you, move it through you. It’s astounding what medicine that is.

And in my experience, sharing and being witnessed in this compounds the medicine.

Like anything newly birthed, having a group of loving witnesses to share in the awe makes us appreciate (usually) what we’ve done all the more. So when we share our writing in our circles, each writer hears from the group what was beautiful and impactful about their piece.

Feedback is just love.

This is another place folks get stuck sometimes. We get just as self-conscious about giving ‘good’ feedback as we are about the quality of our writing. It’s another way of getting caught up in the medium versus what it’s delivering.

But all we’re doing is connecting to the essence of the person’s piece. Giving voice to what we see in the. We’re loving them. Seeing them. And really, that’s all any of us are after isn’t it? Being loved? Being seen? We complicate this, sure. We twist it, throw it at each other, make all sorts of messes in its name, but it really is that simple. When we are met in the ways we need to be, healing happens. This way of creating and sharing is simply a way to give that to each other.

You can’t do any of this wrong.

It’s almost effortless, which is part of why we question it. Most of us were trained in a culture that taught us that things have to be hard to be worthwhile. We have to work at it, figure it out, crack the code. Blood, sweat, and pushups.

Nope, we’re not writers, not in these spaces. We’re doing something way more important than that, and way easier. We’re making space for what needs to be said, seen, released. We’re holding each other in gentleness as healing happens.

It’s a please I always make to whomever is considering joining us at a workshop: please don’t stay away because you’re ‘not a writer.’ None of us are. You know how to channel and you know how to love. That’s all the qualification you need.