You may remember the acting exercise about being a tree. A lot of TV shows like to make light of it. Honestly, I always thought it was a silly exercise until I really began to think about what it asks an actor to do. The secret: it’s not really about being a tree.
No one can do the exercise without letting go of the fear of looking silly. Once an actor loses those inhibitions, she can become the tree blowing in the wind. She can stop worrying about how she looks and concentrate on what the movement feels like.
That realization shone another spotlight on writing for me.
I can’t take my poetry, or even my short fiction, to the level I want it to reach if I am afraid of looking silly or afraid someone might look at me differently because of something I write.
If I can be vulnerable and put away some of that fear, my writing can become more honest. I can explore emotions and stories at a depth I can’t reach when I am guarded.
Being vulnerable doesn’t necessarily mean everything I write has to be autobiographical. It does mean I can’t be afraid to draw on my own experiences and emotions. Like the actor pretending to be a tree, I can use what I know and feel as a doorway into someone else’s world. I can enter the mind of a speaker facing a moral conflict or an edgy situation and try to write that experience honestly, even when it makes me or the reader a little uncomfortable.
That may be part of what good art asks us to do.
I don’t need everything I write to make some profound statement. But if someone recognizes themselves in something I write and feels seen, or if someone sees the world from another point of view for just a moment, that is the kind of success I hope my writing can have.
And I don’t think I can get there while protecting myself from looking silly. I just have to be willing to be the tree.
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