If You Listen, the Forest Speaks

Sitting near an incredible six-trunked tree in Ireland where Yeats once sat and wrote poetry, my friend Tonja led me in a meditation to connect with the trees, and then invited me to write from the quiet, still place she’d guided me to.

In the mossy forest at Coole Park, I resisted the writing. There was no reason or sense, just a slight disinclination to put pen to paper. Then I felt the voice of the tree, heard a few opening lines, and let my pen lead me.

What emerged surprised me: a brief passage, sweet and rich and evocative of the timeless sense I felt there in the forest. The words flowed, I felt rooted, and without worrying whether the writing would be good or serve a purpose, I penned this:

All the winds that hurry through, and the drops of rain that smatter on their rush to ground, the people passing by, their feet clopping along the stones making the ground a hard path, the clouds above painting the sky a moving pillowed landscape, the insects that hop along my bark, the birds make of my branches a stage upon which to gossip and chatter, and I, among my colony of upright peers, stand nearly still, growing imperceptibly taller and wider, so slowly that you might not even know I’m moving, but I’m busting through, stretching beyond my barriers.

My bark splitting into rivers, a long weeping groove of tracks from the tops of my branches to the roots of my toes, each branch bigger than the next, splaying out wider than my years, who knew I’d last this long certainly not me, holding roots for moss and twigs and poets and sky.”

Afterward, I relished the freedom and creativity that I’d allowed to flow through me. Inspired, I felt re-connected to the writer in me who loves to create magical, fictional voices. After years of writing my novel and inspirational articles for Original Impulse, I felt the stirrings of my ‘creative’ writing again.

These are the rewards of turning yourself over to your pen and notebook without agenda. Of releasing the need to control, look good, or know where you’re going. When I first began free writing in 1994, these were the kinds of writings that emerged: stories of people I’d never known, tales of magic and discovery, and emotional landscapes that allowed me to feel and live more deeply.

You can do this kind of writing in The Devoted Writer. This online writing workshop offers a simple invitation: write every day for 15 minutes for 31 days, using the prompts I’ve created. Participants from around the globe give themselves this precious time, and together we pen our way to our own unique voices.

As a leader of this course, it’s my pleasure to see writers of all ilk relish writing in a new and liberated way. As a participant, I add ink to the many pages I’ve written over the years, to contribute to the bank of unpublished writing that has made me the writer and woman I am.

Join us to see what’s waiting in your pen.