How to Use the Energy Method in Your Writing

by Roberta Allen 

For fifteen years, I have used timed exercises to teach writers how to tap in to their energy to make their writing come alive. For me, the key to writing is energy, which I define as the impulse to write, the power deep inside that drives you. I work with a timer, because the timer creates pressure and brings energy to the surface. The timer is an important part of my method. When you have, for example, ten minutes to write, you don't have time for your internal conversations. You don't have time to tell yourself, "I should have taken up weaving," "This isn't any good," or "My husband would kill me if he read this." You may never rid yourself of those thoughts--even when you're writing--but you can learn not to listen. Resisting those thoughts gives them power. If you just allow them to be there without paying attention, they will fade into the background of your mind. The timer is one sure way to bypass those thoughts. But the timer is not enough. Writers need to focus their energy on a particular topic or image. One of the first exercises I ever used was, Write about a lie. But I could have said, Write about a lizard or the moon or anger or love or an invalid. I could have used the newspaper headline "Fall From Grace" or a magazine photo of a chimpanzee. I could have used a postcard of Venice. I could have closed my eyes, opened a dictionary and pointed at random to the word "proof." What matters more than the particular topic or image you choose is the act of focusing. The verbal or visual cue gives your energy direction. Once you set the timer and go--without knowing where the topic or image will lead you--you are an explorer going into the unknown. When you follow your energy, you get out of your own way. You relinquish control. You let go of judgments and expectations. You write with the abandon of a little child. The story, essay, or play that wants to be written by the deeper part of you is often not the story, essay, or play you think you wanted to write. Thinking about writing is very different from the experience of writing. How do you know when an exercise has energy? You feel something. When your feelings are strong, you know you have tapped something deep within yourself. When you tap something deep, you feel more alive. Feeling more alive is not always feeling better. Feeling more alive is allowing yourself to feel whatever you are feeling--whether it is pain, love, joy, sadness, anger, or fear. Not every exercise you do will have energy. You may need to do quite a few before you find the ones I call "triggers," the ones that take you to places you didn't know you wanted to go. If you have difficulty tapping your energy when you write, find it first in everyday life. Try the exercise I call "Moments." Notice moments in your life that have energy--that make you feel more alive. Every day for a week, list one. At the end of a week, write a five or ten minute exercise about the moment with the most energy. That moment might be the one when the colors in the sky at sunset moved you or it might be the moment of regret when you accidentally broke your mother's favorite cut-glass bowl. If you, the writer, are not moved by what you write, the reader won't be either. It is very important to be aware of what you feel. It is not the words that matter in an exercise but the energy behind the words. Words can be changed and revised but the energy is the life in your writing.   Roberta Allen is the author, most recently, of The Playful Way to Knowing Yourself, (April 2003), and The Playful Way to Serious Writing, (2002), both published by Houghton Mifflin. Her other books are The Dreaming Girl, a novel, praised by the Village Voice; Fast Fiction, a writing guide; Certain People and The Traveling Woman, story collections praised by The New York Times Book Review; The Daughter; a novella-in-stories, praised by the Voice Literary Supplement; and Amazon Dream, a memoir. Allen is also a visual artist who has exhibited worldwide, with work in the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection. She is on the faculty at New School University, and has taught in the writing program at Columbia University and in many private workshops. (c) Roberta Allen, 2002 All rights reserved.  First published by "One Woman's Writing Retreat" Catherine Tudor (formerly C. T. Atherton) founded One Woman's Writing Retreat in 1996 in order to create a network for writers at all stages in their careers. Read more about her here.