I teach my first writing workshop

The Women's Center for Healing & Transformation, a great organization in my community, is putting on a "Healing Hearts with Art" festival this weekend and next weekend. Painting, dance, drama, writing, collage, and music are all included. This afternoon, I taught a "Writing to Heal" workshop to a small group, and I was a bit anxious about it because I'd never taught a writing workshop before.

I taught them the Ira Progoff "Dialogue" process for dealing with uncomfortable feelings, and they each wrote a dialogue. I'm especially fond of this exercise for dealing with a troubling or unfinished relationship with anything because it allows us to "speak with" the other entity instead of struggling with it.

After we did that, I showed them an image (in this case, Andrew Thomas Huang's poster for Bjork's "Black Lake"), and we each wrote a few lines that came to us right away. Then I showed them another image--a piece of abstract art--and we did the same thing. The group gave me permission to arrange their contributions in the best way possible to create a finished product, and we now have two poems!

After we did that, I gave them a list of twelve words, and asked them to each choose six of those words and write a poem using all six words. Some of these poems were stunning. (One participant used near rhyme beautifully and had no idea that she'd done it.) Then I had them use the other six words (this was harder) and write another poem.

I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to judge the time properly, but it all came together in exactly an hour and a half, as planned. Now I feel more confident, and am ready to teach more writing workshops.