If you’ve been following my writing and journey, you know that I’m pretty interested in the Law of Polarity – the fact that our universe is an expression of complementary opposites. Years ago, in my early 20s, I started to teach Creative Writing workshops, and without having a very deep understanding of polarity at that time, I was teaching it!
In the process, I coined an expression – ‘Self-As-Team’ – that fits in with everything I’m doing today. Here’s a quick overview:
There are two parts to the writing process, writing and editing. These two parts reflect our intuitive, imaginative, creative side and our conscious, decision-making, discerning side. They also reflect the two hemispheres of our brain: the right hemisphere is associated with intuition, dreams, symbols, inspiration, etc., and the left hemisphere with logic, language, linearity. We can relate the conscious/unconscious model of the brain to these two writing processes as well: we intuitively draw ideas from the unconscious and we deliberately use our conscious mind to assess and order those ideas.
Writer’s block occurs when we do these two processes in the wrong sequence, trying to perfect an idea while it’s still being birthed, or judging our ideas instead of simply receiving and accepting them. Both sides have benefits and drawbacks: Creativity is a wonderful thing but it’s possible to just be gushing with ideas and yet never order them or realise them; it’s also possible to be so brilliant at finding flaws and weaknesses that we tie ourselves up in knots.
We need both aspects, the Creator and the Editor within us, but we need them to function as a team, a partnership. When one dominates the other, we run aground. The more we judge and evaluate and criticise, the more we doubt ourselves, lose competence, and become incapable, whether we’re talking about writing or our our everyday lives. And when we are running rampant with ideas but never taking any of them to completion, we don’t feel too good about ourselves either.
The solution is to express both sides in balance, and when we work with ourselves ‘as a team’ in this way, we build our self-esteem’ – in other words, Self-As-Team is the way to go!
If you’d like to learn more about Self-As-Team, Writing Mastery and life lessons, come along to one of my writing workshops or purchase Writing (& life) Mastery – the ten part online course that takes you through my entire Writing Mastery program, interweaving stimulating creative writing exercises with thought-provoking self-awareness exercises [Not currently available].
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