Story-Editing - Not the Kind You Think

I have been reading Timothy Wilson's Redirect lately. While he writes in an approachable way, the main thing I want out of the book is actually the work of James Pennebaker, who has been researching writing as a healing technique for many decades.

The main exercise that interests me is called "story-editing." The twist I appreciate from Wilson is that one can focus on trying to understand what happened in a traumatic or difficult situation both a) from a multiple reasons perspective (aka don't just rehash again and again but try to find different reasons, especially ones that emphasize agency) and b) that actually work with multiple perspectives - in other words, writing about something that happened to you but in third or second person, so you can literally see it from another angle.

In this article about Pennebaker's work, you can see the story-editing process presented pretty clearly, minus Wilson's additions. Being a linguistic nerd, I am also super curious about Pennebaker's LIWC research - how can we estimate/see healing based on which words, how often they appear and how they change over time in someone's writing?

And all of this, does it relate to memoir? Of course it relates to memoir! It ties down deep in the way that contemplative writing in particular views the writing process. We are, from second to second, moment to moment, telling the story of who we are. It's how we develop ego, it's how we know there is an us - we are tying together our sense of who we are based on constant story telling. Revising that story also happens constantly. So to sit down and do it - whether for healing purposes or for full-length publish a memoir purposes - all of it is along the same spectrum, in my opinion. Our intentions and goals vary, but the research still bears importance, regardless of how you apply it.

Our Need For Story

Lately I have been thinking a lot about - and writing a lot about - the stories we tell and how they help or hinder us. 

The photo above is a page from Abigail Thomas' book, Thinking About Memoir. This little section is called "The need for story". 

Then, the link and excerpt below are from a slightly different angle - a novelist talking about his experience with therapy. I love the article title: "Psychotherapy as a kind of art". A good reminder that we are always, always constructing story, fictional or not. That's human-ness at its core.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/opinionator/2015/01/27/psychotherapy-as-a-kind-of-art/?smid=fb-share&referrer=

But I stayed on, three times a week, for the next six years. And when, two years after that, my family fell apart and I became single parent to my three children, I returned and stayed on, twice a week, for eight years. Session after session, I talked with increasing freedom and trust about anything and everything — dreams, memories, doubts, fears — and about matters that had been hiding in closed rooms of my mind. I approached therapy sessions with the same energy, intensity and sheer playfulness I brought to my writing: I brought in journal entries, letters, books, photographs, my typewriter, my baseball glove and drafts of works in progress. So large was my desire for my doctor to know me that I once appeared at her door with that day’s show-and-tell piled high in one of my children’s toy wheelbarrows.

It may sound funny, but it never fails to amaze me how what we do and need in writing are the same as what we do and need in life, whether or not we are writing about our lives. But especially if we are.