19.05.2011

Last Seen... Having a Blurt —

As a freelance writer who works alone, sometimes I need someone to bounce ideas off. Not necessarily about writing, but about all the things that go with writing: steady income streams (I wish…), career plans, juggling several projects at once. Last year I had some wonderful sessions with career coach Joanna Maxwell, who gave me creative solutions to a range of issues.

Recently I was in touch with Joanna and she suggested I have a blurt about an aspect of my work that was troubling me. Since then, I’ve asked people attending my workshops to have a blurt about writing dilemmas.

There’s something captivating about the word ‘blurt'—a cross between a bleat and a spurt—that’s irreverent and rather bolshy. It usually has bad connotations and in the dictionary, it says it means, to ‘utter suddenly and impulsively’. While there are times when blurting is not a good idea, when writing, it’s a way not to worry about what you’re getting down on the page.

I asked one writer I’m mentoring to have a blurt about what his travel memoir is really about. In one sentence, he nailed it. I used it in my recent Sydney Writers' Festival workshops and participants poured out pages in less than 20 minutes.

I’ve been wondering why that is. I reckon it’s because if we think too much, we miss the obvious. If Joanna had asked me to write a synopsis (groan) or a bullet list (yawn) of reasons why I do or don’t want to do something, then I would have tried to be rational in my approach. I would have tried to get it right first time round.

I think the self-editor is so strong in most of us, we don’t even realise it’s there. Sometimes, of course, that self-censoring voice has a good reason to chime in, but often it denies what’s deep within us. Or it tries to temper that untrammeled creative burst.

But a blurt comes from the gut, or the heart, and it bypasses the thinking mind.

What you don’t want to do is to then blurt out what you’ve written to everyone you meet. Oh no! Once it’s down on paper, better to keep it in. Sit with it. Re-read a few days later and see where the hotspot is in the writing—and act on that.

Thanks Joanna!

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