Embodied Writing by Manmeet Kaur https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh Putting together resources from the community to help build a caring, loving, empathetic writing routine. en-us 2021-03-14 07:48:14 UTC 2021-05-12 07:47:29 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet.net/icons/png/1f60a.png I contain Multitudes manmeetkaur0312 https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1306649113 A helpful poem for when you contradict you.]]> 2021-03-14 08:10:54 UTC https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1306649113 Sample 1- Quarantine (Non Fiction) manmeetkaur0312 https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1307060973 2021-03-14 12:13:18 UTC https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1307060973 Sample 2- Memoir (Fiction) manmeetkaur0312 https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1307066179 2021-03-14 12:16:02 UTC https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1307066179 Examples of embodied writing- 1 manmeetkaur0312 https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1307089677 In the quest of trying to change the world, I know
that I tend to leave myself behind. I forget how I appear to the world around me: the colour of
my skin, the protrusion of my chest. My verse, prose, thoughts, and humour reek of this
forgetfulness even as I declare a feminist verdict on a patriarchal illusion.]]> 2021-03-14 12:29:25 UTC https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1307089677 What is embodied writing? manmeetkaur0312 https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1307097503 - Writing with an acute sense of the time and space it stems from.
- This sense of time and space can be physically rooted in your body, or the space it occupies, but it ideally will have your body's experience featured.
- The writing that emerges from this technique will most commonly be relational to an external stimuli/incident/ person and its interaction with your body or your space.  

Two levels of embodied writing- Tasting and digestion- tasting is when you recognise the experience- what happened? Where did you feel it in your body? What was the particular quality of it? The colour? Texture? 

Digestion is what helps integrate the experience with the rest of you. How the experience becomes a part of the rest of your body, your fabric.]]> 2021-03-14 12:33:40 UTC https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1307097503 Why is it useful? manmeetkaur0312 https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1307133908 - Quite simply: writing about your experience is a form of self expression. It's the fulfilment of a human tendency to communicate, resolve, witness. Embodied writing in particular sets in motion a deliberate process of paying closer attention. It is a technique within the bigger umbrella of writing one's own experience onto paper. It is simply a tool which asks you to delve slightly deeper into how something makes YOU feel. Not the general experience of public spaces, not the common idea of family, home, children. What is it like for you?
- Creates distance: any form of writing is a form of translation. By the effort of articulation, we make the experience or the thoughts real, visible, but also outside of ourself. The distance that we achieve by doing this helps us to be keen observers, which is a step ahead from being caught in the thick of it. By being on paper, the experience is outside of you, it's available for observation. Even if the process stops here for a bit, even if you are not sure what to do with this articulation, at least it now defined and caught in language. It is legible, and it can be seen.
-  The body of work is the work of the body. I think of my writing, especially the one I do at the end of the day about the body as its evidence. It is evidence that I have existed, and that this body of work my mark on the world. It is my very own cultural artefact, a living testimony to how this world has made me feel. What it has been like? 
]]> 2021-03-14 12:52:12 UTC https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1307133908 Perspective manmeetkaur0312 https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1307148674 If writing is simply a form of communication and if we should be able to do it instinctively, then the question remains- why is it so freaking hard to do it?

Creativity is the homestead of change. If you were not creative, you wouldn't be here. It takes creativity to imagine that thing could/should be otherwise. If you are an activist for change, you are always already  oriented on the possibility of it. It takes energy to sustain the rebellion, so it's important to nurture it from within. Resistance from within, not the same as plundering the self for a story.
whatever you value of yourself can shine through, mirrored and magnified.

In the interest of complete disclosure and vulnerability, I myself have been struggling with keeping a writing routine, and have not written a short story since December 2020. But I have become much more forgiving towards myself through the process of writing. It doesn't mean I have stopped trying to put pen to paper until the muse descends, but it does mean that I am no longer my biggest critic. Which brings me to the next question- who are you when you are writing? Are the writer or the reader, or worse still, are you the critic?

Exercise: Think to the last time you were writing something for yourself, or trying to journal, or your last attempt at whatever it is that you are wanting to take away from this workshop. Who were you when you were doing this? writer? reader? Critic? or something else?

Sometimes the issue is not that we do not know what to write, or that we can't. It's just that we are not writing in our own skin- we are refusing to be the writer as we are, and trying to pre judge the quality of the writing as a reader, or a critic. Going back to my example of not having written a short story, I do try to be a kind friend to myself by still jotting down the ideas I do get, and writing my daily journal. As a writer I still measure my output as the number of short stories I am able to complete, while trying to remember everyday that I can in fact, write and closely observe my own story.
Not inhabiting your own truth- That might sound like a serious issue, but fortunately or unfortunately, it's a common one. That's where embodied writing or even art can come handy. 

It might be hard on some days, but think of it like this- It's a pause button, it allows you to Look closer, delve deeper, rewind, proceed all at will. It feeds into itself. The more you write, the more you observe. And the more you do this, you build your own narrative- your own version of the world, which you have closely experienced and therefore can't be convinced out of.

Thoughts?

]]> 2021-03-14 12:59:28 UTC https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1307148674 The process manmeetkaur0312 https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1307245623 A room of one's own
The next task is to recognise your audience. It is you. And therefore, it is not your job is not make the story feel safe- it might not not be the most closeted, well boundaried story with a definitive beginning, middle and end.. That's okay. The experience doesn't have to be linear or binary, it doesn't have to be correct in the eyes of someone else. Sometimes this can be tough. It can expose the distance between who you think you are, what you want to be, and how you feel bout yourself in that moment on paper. That's okay- that's the whole idea.

- The good news is that if you do it regularly enough- the parts of your reality which are not working well, or are in conflict with the rest of you will slowly become visible. The places where your various identities come into friction will reveal itself.

Example of This Is us

Example- religion, feminism, womanhood- term paper on Sikh masculinities.

The interaction of anything with you is specific to you. People remember and think of things differently. The same incident is completely different for two people- writing helps you record your experience of it- it allows you to see yourself change over time like no other form of communication does.

This doesn't mean embodied writing is always non fictional and completely true. Change some details, widen the lens.]]> 2021-03-14 13:48:51 UTC https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1307245623 Why share? manmeetkaur0312 https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1307263828 "In this more detailed portrait of their shared situation, members begin to understand in
what ways their personal problems reflect larger sociocultural arrangements,
such as the devaluing and exclusion of women and the poor. Once this
process is set in motion, Belenky (1996) says people begin to move from a
“paralysis that arose from thinking their difficulties were due to personal
inadequacies” (p. 396)."

Why share- dreams can becomes visions when many people come together from them. 

]]> 2021-03-14 13:57:43 UTC https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1307263828 Why write? manmeetkaur0312 https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1488126856 Writing about and for yourself, pouring creative energy and time into your own story is a form of justice, justice at a small scale. When you write your story in your own words, when you recount and create evidence of your being, even if it's just for yourself, you do right by your experience.
Writing is a practice suspended in time- there is nothing in it that stops you from going backwards or forwards. A memory or an imagined possibility can spring from the present as easily as the next sentence comes. It allows you to relive, revive, but also imagine and create a future. 

Your activist diary then becomes a place of private empowerment. Your narrative, your story- what moves you? it articulates an experience which when shared, adds to the vocabulary of what it has been like to be alive so far, lending new words, deeper meanings to the movement. Activism is communicated in language and/or creativity. Energy is a more subtle part of it, which can be shared by those who make the effort to be present, but to MAKE present, you must communicate. ]]> 2021-05-04 04:03:40 UTC https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1488126856 tools manmeetkaur0312 https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1488185097 Words as building blocks, sentences
Structures of language- if you're within the same frame, the dialogue doesn't change. The victory of majoritarian govt- they narrow the debate- the shrinking of inner life. example of the aquatic animal- shrinking of an inner life

Writing long form for self as a way if moving beyond, we will not be able to simplify if we do not fully understand

tips on blocks of writing for non fiction]]> 2021-05-04 04:42:18 UTC https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1488185097 Selfcare as warfare manmeetkaur0312 https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1488643571 https://feministkilljoys.com/2014/08/25/selfcare-as-warfare/]]> 2021-05-04 08:02:28 UTC https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1488643571 Feedback manmeetkaur0312 https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1492446688 Day 2
Key questions: 
What is the narrative voice of the piece?
What was most resonant piece of writing in what was shared?

Day 3

]]> 2021-05-05 04:33:58 UTC https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1492446688 Recommended reading / shows from the group manmeetkaur0312 https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1494611258 Girl, Woman, Other: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl,_Woman,_Other

Amazon Prime/Hotstar: This Is Us

Netflix: Nannette by Hannah Gadsby

The Sound and The fury, William Faulkner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sound_and_the_Fury

'The Queer Art of failure" by Jack Halberstam. It is a very witty, full-bodied and coherent example of research and theory that goes with small story narratives.


]]> 2021-05-05 16:21:01 UTC https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1494611258 Social Media handles manmeetkaur0312 https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1496971535 2021-05-06 06:57:44 UTC https://padlet.com/manmeetkaur0312/4gbj243ejms6hhwh/wish/1496971535