By Kathy McKernan

They are saying that one option to heal from previous trauma is to jot down it down. The story. The details. The issues that occurred. Pour the phrases onto a web page, hand them to the universe, and transfer on. Write it out. Let it go.

So, I wrote. And wrote. And stored writing.

I confirmed up in small, devoted methods—half hours, ninety-minute co-writes, every day consistency. I believed progress was a matter of accumulation: sufficient periods, sufficient pages, sufficient phrases.

Each time I completed a draft, I requested the identical query: Is that this sufficient?

My physique answered instantly.

Unusual goals. Joint ache. Random swellings.

Not a whisper. Not hesitation.

A full-bodied, unequivocal no.

I assumed this was resistance. Or perfectionism. Or trauma refusing to loosen its grip. So, I doubled down on consistency. I revised faithfully. I trusted the method I’d been taught: present up typically, present up small, belief momentum to do the work.

However one thing wasn’t occurring.

I had written what occurred to me.

I had not but informed my story.

(These usually are not the identical factor.)

What I’d produced was correct—generally even courageous—however inert. My nervous system knew it. Nothing had reorganized. Nothing had settled. The physique doesn’t launch simply because details are acknowledged. It releases when that means has been metabolized.

And that means, it seems, requires time.

Not simply period throughout weeks, however depth throughout hours.

The shift got here after I started writing in lengthy, protected blocks—full weekends, as soon as a month—the place the one factor on the calendar was the work itself. No errands. No journey. No “productive” distractions. No escape hatches.

As soon as the interruptions fell away, the story took over. The e book modified. Themes surfaced unexpectedly. Metaphors arrived uninvited and refused to depart. Revision stopped being punishment and have become excavation.

Once I dedicated 4, six, eight hours, it grew to become simpler to spend three hours remodeling a single sentence. Much less charged. Much less determined. Much less pressing. Letting it totally kind mattered extra than simply “getting it achieved.”

I realized one thing essential in these weekends: Fragments can keep, however depth transforms.

There’s a neurological purpose the lengthy blocks mattered. As neuroscientist Amy Arnsten explains, “The prefrontal cortex is important for sustaining consideration over time, integrating data, and supporting advanced, goal-directed thought.”

Cal Newport makes use of the time period “deep work” to explain the flexibility to focus with out distraction on a cognitively demanding process. Sustained consideration retains the prefrontal cortex engaged lengthy sufficient for integration to happen. When the nervous system settles, the story can lastly take form.

Quick periods stored me oriented; they preserved continuity. However the lengthy blocks—the once-a-month intensives—had been the place the actual motion occurred. I noticed, writing in regards to the faith I left, that I had the antagonist unsuitable: what I’d been serving wasn’t perception, however a publishing machine—a correction that modified the body, letting the construction emerge so the e book might lastly reveal itself.

When this system that launched me to month-to-month writing weekends ended, I promised I’d stick with it alone. However and not using a designated container, weekends crammed shortly. I didn’t lack dedication; I lacked protected time.

I stored writing through the week. I confirmed up. I moved ahead. However to write the story, slightly than have a tendency it, I wanted extra construction.

The intensives had been by no means about productiveness alone. They had been about staying with the web page lengthy sufficient for the deeper layers to floor. About giving the work the uninterrupted time it must reveal itself. About letting the e book turn into one thing I couldn’t have deliberate prematurely.

In these open areas of time, revision grew to become exploration. Effort grew to become curiosity. I finished asking, Is that this ok? and began asking, What else is right here?

And generally—quietly, unexpectedly—I felt my physique let go of the embedded ache.

Not as a result of I wrote it down.

However as a result of I stayed lengthy sufficient to complete what the story was asking of me.

________

Kathy McKernan is an writer and former technical author who splits her time between Michigan’s Higher Peninsula and the California desert. She writes on Substack and is at the moment at work on Even Once I Stayed, the primary in a memoir trilogy.

Starting this weekend (January 24-25) Kathy hosts Marathon Weekend Co-Writing periods, 10AM-3:30PM Jap on Saturday and Sunday, the final full weekend of every month. Classes are FREE, no registration required, and anybody diving deeply right into a artistic undertaking is welcome. You don’t have to remain the entire time. Sundays shut with a go to from The Brevity Weblog editor Allison Okay Williams to debate writing and publishing questions. Full particulars and the Zoom hyperlink right here.

Tagged: marathon cowriting, memoir, writing course of