Writing from your Third Self
Emma Goldman-Sherman
“Certainly there is within each of us a self that is neither a child, nor a servant of the hours. It is a third self, occasional in some of us, tyrant in others. This self is out of love with the ordinary; it is out of love with time. It has a hunger for eternity.”
Mary Oliver, Upstream, Selected Essays
Oliver says we have our childhood self (the needy self) and our day-to-day self (the one that often interrupts us with the idea of being out of mustard or needing to deal with Uncle Irv’s upcoming birthday) and our third self is our artist self, and this is where we can do our best work.
Please take a moment to access this third self within. There are many ways to do this. They include grounding yourself to the earth (feet flat on the floor, sitting tall, breathing into your belly), prayer, walking in nature, yogic breathing, metta meditation or any other kind of quieting/prayer/meditation that can bring you to a more centered place within yourself.
"‘In the wholeheartedness of concentration,’ the poet Jane Hirshfield wrote in her beautiful inquiry into the effortless effort of creativity, ‘world and self begin to cohere. With that state comes an enlarging: of what may be known, what may be felt, what may be done.’” Maria Popova, Brain Pickings (online)and quoting from Jane Hirshfield’s 9 Gates.
From wherever you are in your more grounded state (and this will change from day to day as you get more comfortable doing this, if this is a direction you want to go), imagine the world you are writing. To exercise a visual part of your mind, you might want to draw a map of this world for yourself.
Identify a scene you need to work on. Imagine your characters in that place. Check in with each of them. They might be able to articulate what they want to you and yet be unable to discuss it with anyone in their world. They may not want to discuss anything with you first. And yet they may have strategies. They may use language differently than you imagine. They may incorporate body language and all kinds of ways at their disposal to get what they want.
Usually the person who has more power in the space owns the space and the objects there. This may or may not be your protagonist, but it will affect the scene. If the person who does not own the space or the objects therein begins to use the space as if s/he does, this transgression changes the dynamic between the two characters and/or between audience and character(s) in a significant way.
Power Dynamics change when other characters enter the scene. Three onstage is different from two. A child quickly learns that being alone at Mrs. McGee’s house is very different from being with Mrs. McGee when Mommy comes to take the child home. Suddenly the child has a lot of power and can get a lot of attention. So Mommy’s entrance changes everything. We might see Mrs. McGee rise from her chair, put away her knitting, turn off the cartoons, and pull the child over to the table where her snack is, before Mrs. McGee can open the door to let Mommy in. As soon as Mommy arrives, the child feels free to slip from the chair and run to Mommy even though Mrs. McGee has told her not to run. . .
So Chekhov has a lot of characters entering and exiting and if you look at the scenes there are shifts in dynamics each time someone comes in or goes out, and you should not forget that every exit is an entrance to somewhere else. Characters have lives beyond the set. They can bring those lives in with them.
When characters break the rules you create tension that could result in laughter or fear/suspense. If a character doesn’t behave they way they are expected to behave, dynamics shift. PLAY!
Art is the perpetual motion of illusion. The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for any one but inspire them? -Bob Dylan
The task of the artist is to make the human being uncomfortable
-Lucien Freud
The task of an artist is to breathe an emotional charge onto the canvas so it may be perceived and experienced by the spectator.
- Konstantin Voinov
There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.
-Brene Brown (because the last word should go to a woman)
Emma Goldman-Sherman
“Certainly there is within each of us a self that is neither a child, nor a servant of the hours. It is a third self, occasional in some of us, tyrant in others. This self is out of love with the ordinary; it is out of love with time. It has a hunger for eternity.”
Mary Oliver, Upstream, Selected Essays
Oliver says we have our childhood self (the needy self) and our day-to-day self (the one that often interrupts us with the idea of being out of mustard or needing to deal with Uncle Irv’s upcoming birthday) and our third self is our artist self, and this is where we can do our best work.
Please take a moment to access this third self within. There are many ways to do this. They include grounding yourself to the earth (feet flat on the floor, sitting tall, breathing into your belly), prayer, walking in nature, yogic breathing, metta meditation or any other kind of quieting/prayer/meditation that can bring you to a more centered place within yourself.
"‘In the wholeheartedness of concentration,’ the poet Jane Hirshfield wrote in her beautiful inquiry into the effortless effort of creativity, ‘world and self begin to cohere. With that state comes an enlarging: of what may be known, what may be felt, what may be done.’” Maria Popova, Brain Pickings (online)and quoting from Jane Hirshfield’s 9 Gates.
From wherever you are in your more grounded state (and this will change from day to day as you get more comfortable doing this, if this is a direction you want to go), imagine the world you are writing. To exercise a visual part of your mind, you might want to draw a map of this world for yourself.
Identify a scene you need to work on. Imagine your characters in that place. Check in with each of them. They might be able to articulate what they want to you and yet be unable to discuss it with anyone in their world. They may not want to discuss anything with you first. And yet they may have strategies. They may use language differently than you imagine. They may incorporate body language and all kinds of ways at their disposal to get what they want.
Usually the person who has more power in the space owns the space and the objects there. This may or may not be your protagonist, but it will affect the scene. If the person who does not own the space or the objects therein begins to use the space as if s/he does, this transgression changes the dynamic between the two characters and/or between audience and character(s) in a significant way.
Power Dynamics change when other characters enter the scene. Three onstage is different from two. A child quickly learns that being alone at Mrs. McGee’s house is very different from being with Mrs. McGee when Mommy comes to take the child home. Suddenly the child has a lot of power and can get a lot of attention. So Mommy’s entrance changes everything. We might see Mrs. McGee rise from her chair, put away her knitting, turn off the cartoons, and pull the child over to the table where her snack is, before Mrs. McGee can open the door to let Mommy in. As soon as Mommy arrives, the child feels free to slip from the chair and run to Mommy even though Mrs. McGee has told her not to run. . .
So Chekhov has a lot of characters entering and exiting and if you look at the scenes there are shifts in dynamics each time someone comes in or goes out, and you should not forget that every exit is an entrance to somewhere else. Characters have lives beyond the set. They can bring those lives in with them.
When characters break the rules you create tension that could result in laughter or fear/suspense. If a character doesn’t behave they way they are expected to behave, dynamics shift. PLAY!
Art is the perpetual motion of illusion. The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for any one but inspire them? -Bob Dylan
The task of the artist is to make the human being uncomfortable
-Lucien Freud
The task of an artist is to breathe an emotional charge onto the canvas so it may be perceived and experienced by the spectator.
- Konstantin Voinov
There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.
-Brene Brown (because the last word should go to a woman)
