Writing Therapy

Lesson 2: Turn Up the Volume?

Intensity

Lesson Two, Section Two: Owning the Feeling.

Even though this is therapeutic jargon “owning a feeling” does have general applicability and in some ways is just a commonsense concept. What is called “owning a feeling” appears to involve at least two processes on the part of the ‘owner’: 1) exaggeration of intensity, and 2) visceral or bodily awareness. Both of these processes are an integral part of the writer’s process, as Danish and others have pointed out. As Danish points out it’s important for the writer to gather details about what he or she is angry at, just as it’s important to gather details about anything when writing. This is really what a writer, William Carlos Williams for example, is getting at when he tells writers to focus on things and it’s what writing teachers are after when they talk about the importance of specifics and recommend concrete details rather than abstracts. It is these details that communicate thoughts and feelings vividly by writers to readers.

Other ways of exaggerating intensity would include varying the intensity of colors, such as using violet rather than pink, for example. Size can also be varied. Size as well as other elements of the process can refer both to the thing or person described and to the words used in description. For example, a person you are angry at can be seen as little or big, and he or she can be described using these or other words. He or she can also be described as luke warm or tepid, as hot, or as boiling hot. Why not take a look at varying the intensity of what you’ve written and we can discuss what you find out and other ways you see that intensity can be varied? This difference between the object and the words used to describe it (and changing them independently) is one way of gaining distance from or perspective on things and feelings and we will be getting to this further in lesson four here.

Intensity is an interesting concept when it comes to writing. Sometimes less is more. This something I think you can see when you think of what seems erotic to you. Personally, for example, I prefer scantiness to blatant sexuality, I’m sure you have other

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