When I began leading journaling groups six years ago, I had no conception of the healing energy that would be unleashed. After all, I facilitated writing classes, not therapeutic support groups.  Over time, however, I happened on the place where writing and healing overlap--  a place I now call Centered Writing Practice™. When we focus on Centered Writing Practice, healing occurs without effort or intent. In my groups, I have seen shy women open up, depressed women take charge of their lives, ill women maintain wellness for longer periods of time, and grieving women find solace.  All this occurs while we focus on writing from our hearts, telling our stories, and listening to one another.

Writing and what it implies—that our deepest thoughts will be read and therefore judged by someone else—provokes anxiety and fear greater than any I've seen related to math, the other academic fear producer.
Over and over, I hear stories of how enrollment in a creative writing class or workshop destroyed confidence in the ability to write creatively. These stories are similar to my own, although I'll admit I've never heard anyone else admit to carrying their fear to such absurdity as I.

I enrolled in a creative writing class at UC, Berkeley, in the sixties.  The class met in one of the oldest lecture halls, one filled with rows of wooden chairs, which squeaked when you pulled the seat down, attached to small tables you pulled up from the side, which clanked when they snapped into place. The room had windows, but I still remember it as dark, perhaps because cypress and juniper bushes shrouded the dirty windows.

At least a hundred students enrolled in this class. I don't remember the professor, but he was probably someone famous. After all, my physics 101 class was taught by Edward Teller, who helped develop thermonuclear energy, and that didn't mean I learned physics.  In the creative writing course, I felt I was expected to know how to write creatively before I came to the class. Like many students, my creative writing was limited to BS-ing my way through essay exams. I didn't really know what creative writing meant and in the anonymity of a hundred students I wasn't enlightened.

What I learned in the class was how painful it is to receive negative criticism for something you've never been taught (or even encouraged) to do. I also learned I couldn't be a creative writer and should be ashamed of myself for trying.

In the thirty years that followed, I wrote magazine articles, grants, press releases, training manuals, and stacks of letters to family and friends. I edited books for publishers.  I received praise for my efforts, but continued to feel unworthy. 

The year I wrote "writer" in the space beside "mother's occupation" on my son's college application form, I expected the FBI to arrest me for fraud.  About the same time I bought a writing magazine in an airport and was so frightened someone might ask me if I were a writer, I hid the magazine as if it were hard porn.  I am serious. I did this.

In the nineties, I took the leap again and enrolled in a creative writing class at UNCA with Tommy Hays. Another ugly room, but only twenty students enrolled, three nontraditional (which means over age forty), and best of all, a teacher who cared. I wrote my first short story. Tommy suggested I submit it for publication. My self-confidence rose, perhaps not to the stars, but at least to treetop level. 

Determined to learn my craft, I wanted to dive in to my writing, but first I encountered more rites of initiation in the form of a few more passes from swords of criticism disguised as "help." 

I finally decided I didn't have to listen to every bit of advice, that I could selectively choose whom to ask for feedback. I saw too how all of the criticism, fear, and suffering held the seeds of my destiny, how our gifts are usually revealed in our greatest losses.

Because of my wound, I felt impelled to support other women who wanted to write. I began teaching the journaling classes that evolved into Centered Writing Practice™.  And, I began again to write.

Writing Practice is practice. It means we're not perfect, we're trying it on.  We're following the pen to discover where we're going. We're writing direct, honest prose, laying the groundwork for everything else we may want to write--short stories, novels, columns, family histories, memoirs.  We're writing from our hearts and finding it juicy and good.

Peggy Tabor Millin,
© 2006