Total Artist #1.5: Writing our way to authenticity

Saying goodbye to Prose/Clarity and welcoming Poetry/Mystery

We have reached the pivot point of Writing month - it is the full moon and in the coming fortnight, we will be leaving behind prose/clarity and moving on to an exploration of poetry/mystery.

As we close this chapter, I just wanted to take a moment to dive a little bit deeper into some of the ideas we’ve been exploring over the past couple of weeks.

And so, some final thoughts on prose and clarity - and an introduction to the power of poetry/mystery…

(Quick note: Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed a glitch in the email numbering - oops! I’ve fixed this on the main Substack page, but the good news is that the emails should work in any order.)

When meaning becomes malleable

Several months ago, my six-year-old daughter became fascinated with telling jokes.

It was like watching her swing around on a new linguistic playground, as she started using speech in new ways. She delighted in weaving words together to surprise, to trick, to connect (eagerly asking “do you get it!?”), and to provoke laughter.

She had discovered something essential - that language does not always mean what it says on the surface.

It’s a key developmental milestone (for most folks) to perceive that language carries layers of meaning beyond the words themselves. The sophistication to recognise and construct this social code is an ability that we construct piece by piece, over a number of years.

Gradually, we learn how to say the right thing at the right time, regardless of what we truly think or feel (“what a delicious fruitcake!”). We hone these skills - to cajole, to convince, to tailor our words for the response we hope to elicit.

These are not just social niceties. They are essential ways of showing care for others and building culture and connection through the shared understanding of meaning.

Using language is a skill. And when we understand how to employ subtext (the gap between the words said and the meaning beneath the surface), we unlock myriad new expressive possibilities. The more we practice, the more adept we become.

However, this can also become a trap.

Recovering authenticity

The ability to cloak our true feelings is an essential survival skill in social environments. But if we spend long enough in the land of euphemism and ambiguity, we can lose track of the powerful directness we possess so naturally as young children.

“I want cookie NOW!” becomes “Oh, I’m not that hungry, are you having one? Maybe just a bite, because I really shouldn’t…”

It is shockingly easy to move through our lives without realising how often we shy away from saying what we truly mean.

When that happens too often, we find that our words become unreliable. This makes it harder to connect in a genuine way to others. We can even lose sight of our own true thoughts and feelings if our language has become too murky to help us see them clearly.

For me, language and emotion exist in a feedback loop. If I don’t have the courage to speak what I feel, I can’t keep hold my feelings and make them real to myself. But if I can’t figure out what I feel, then I don’t know how to express it in words. Disconnection builds as I drift further and further from that core emotional self.

There is great power in the willingness to be honest and direct - both as artists and as people.

Prioritising directness can seem like inviting an unfiltered response. Yet for me, the opposite is true. It encourages me to drill down deeper, to reflect more carefully, and to speak with more intentionality to share the purest essence of what I am trying to communicate.

We often have to get in touch with an earlier version of ourselves, from a time unbound by adult social conventions, to relearn how to voice the unsaid when we encounter it in the world around us and within our own hearts.

Honing our ability to be as clear as possible is essential for knowing ourselves, and connecting authentically to others.

Redrafting as reflection: Writing to unlock our inner selves

Every mode of artistic expression has something rich and unique to offer us (which is the basis for The Total Artist: An Adventure In Expressive Living), but there is something about writing that is particularly close to my heart. As someone who is at their core a writer, it’s been interesting to take time to consider why this particular medium that captures and holds my interest so powerfully.

I am continually fascinated by the way that writing sits at the place that our thoughts and feelings intersect.

When I turn my inner world into language, I have the ability to take my thoughts and my feelings out of my head, to turn them over, to look at them, and to discover more about the world and myself.

Writing is an unmatched tool for self-discovery - because this is the essence of what redrafting is.

When I try to voice what is closest to my heart, it usually doesn’t come out quite right the first time. I have to find my way through a whole maze of emotions, assumptions, and memories along the way, asking:

What do I know or believe that I am not yet ready to admit?

What do I want to say that I have not yet found the words for?

What are my own confusions, hypocrisies, and uncertainties?

Do I have the strength to stand in my truth? And the wisdom to communicate it with kindness?

It’s not easy to sit with these questions for most of us, myself included. But with patience, we can find ourselves standing on a layer of internal bedrock that we have never before encountered.

It takes courage to embrace the pursuit of clarity as a process of discovery, rather than confirmation of certainty.

This journey can feel like walking towards an endless horizon (because there is no final endpoint where all is clear forevermore) but it is one worth taking nevertheless.

Whether we want to be taken seriously as an artists, or encountered as someone trustworthy in our personal lives, clarity is our friend, and the closer we can get to it, the better.

What makes the best writing?

I’m going to share another story from a writing workshop with Tom Hunsinger, the teacher I mentioned in my last video.

This happened nearly twenty years ago, but it still etched in my memory like it was yesterday.

The very first day of my very first writing class with him, he asked for a volunteer. And one of the braver students came up to stand at the front of the class.

‘The very best writing’, he told us, ‘comes from here -’ he pointed to her head. And took a breath.

‘And here -’ he pointed to her heart. Another breath.

‘And here -’ he pointed to the gut. This time, it was like the whole room was holding its breath… and then exhaled.

We all sat in silence for a moment to let it sink in. And then, we picked up our pens.

Ever since that moment, I have strived to make sure that if I possibly can my writing brings all of these parts of myself: head, heart, and gut.

True clarity is not something we can construct intellectually. It has to also incorporate our emotions and our physical body.

In my years of working with writers, I’ve observed that most of us have a hierarchy between these elements - one place we easily gravitate towards, another that we like to visit, and a third that we can be reluctant about approaching.

For me, head and heart always came naturally - but reaching into my gut to bring out the messy, gritty, visceral, sensorially rich parts of life is something I have to make a conscious effort to do.

But I’m fooling myself if I think I am being clear or direct without checking in with this part of my experience.

If one of these core elements is missing, the writing can never really sing.

Without head, the text lacks insight. Without heart, there is no feeling. Without guts, there is no sense of reality.

The pursuit of clarity is at its heart a pursuit of truth - but to achieve this, we have to look through many lenses, bringing in as many facets of the self as possible.

The most essential ingredient of clarity = the doorway into mystery

Sometimes, when we go looking for our innermost truth, we find an answer. But other times, we discover that at the centre of our curiosity, is a big, fat question mark.

The answer never materialises, and we are brought face to face with our own ignorance, uncertainty, ambivalence, and confusion.

It can be tempting to simply throw our hands up and surrender; but if we stop writing/questioning/creating when we reach the point of ‘I don’t know,’ we miss out on all the riches that lie beyond.

The most essential ingredient of clarity is the willingness to say ‘I don’t know’, but not give up.

In the world of playwriting, may writers are coached to work out ‘what am I trying to say’. But instead, I orient my process around: ‘what question am I trying to ask?’ For example, the play I’m working on at the moment asks - is it possible to reclaim hate speech, and how do we do it? I genuinely don’t know the answer, but I am using the writing process to stumble my way towards an answer.

I intentionally look for the place of not-knowing, and step into it, because this is where the magic happens.

Sometimes I discover new truths about the world or about myself. Other times, I am simply left with my questions. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. These places where things are murky, complicated, or difficult is usually where we need art the most.

In the places where we can no longer keep hold of clarity, when all that we know seems to give way - mystery is ready to step in.

Mystery can allow for the unexplainable, the complex, the metaphorical. It opens up the door to possibility, allowing us move beyond what is known and step into the realm where the unknown is allowed to exist in its fullest expression.

And that is exactly where we are heading next.

For now,

Alli

Access Support: If you have access needs that I’m not currently meeting, please do drop me a line! (The best email is contact@ac-smith.com.) I’d really like to make this project available to anyone who wants to participate.

Image: Generated by AI in Canva DreamLab in response to the prompt: a watercolour rendition of a vanishing point.