'Riting Without Righting

I taught a class for seniors, once. I called it Still Flowin. I wanted to hear, honor and catch stories that might have never been shared or, if they were, ignored.

What made this writing workshop unique was how little we wrote. Most of the time was spent in conversation, sharing stories, trials, victories and secret hobbies.

One woman brought her butterfly art, beautiful watercolors on framed canvas. Another, who always knitted and crocheted in class, brought her homemade dolls. There were screenplays and sermons and everyone had stories to tell.

They Flowed. I listened. I heard narrative clues in their tales and instructed them to write quick notes and return to telling their story.

Brenda Ueland's If You Want to Write was my go to manual for that workshop. In one of my favorite chapters, she shares what she means by writing:

'Whenever I say "writing" in this book I also mean anything that you love and want to do or to make. It may be a six-act tragedy in blank verse, it may be dressmaking or acrobatics, or inventing a new system of double-entry bookkeeping. But you must be sure that your imagination and love are behind it, that you are not working just from grim resolution, i.e., to make money or impress people.'

Brenda Ueland's words inspired me to trust the Flow of the class, the students. When I did, writing and the workshop became a Rite: unrighting the right way to write without writing. We were recognizing and honoring the Mystery groaning within, giving it voice, shape, the thrum of dripping paint, a spoon's rim shot against a bowl of batter, maybe the quiet clink of crochet needles and the static pop of yarn entwining a gift for Grandma's girl.

Telling stories and having conversations, some pleasant, some heated, but always in the domain of respect, taking notes and following up with writing homework, that was our formula. Our Flow.

I received good medicine teaching that workshop and the finale featured a live reading and a delectable dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant where we celebrated our right to write without writing or righting.

Still Flowin workshop at Inglewood Senior Center