Breaking Through: How to Approach What You Must Not Write About

Deena Metzer’s Writing for Your Life: A Guide and Companion for the Inner Worlds is a cherished writing book of mine. This book helps writers explore their creativity through journals, autobiography, stories, fairytales, dreams and myths. It is chock-full of the most unique self-discovery exercises that I’ve ever come across.

More than 20 years ago, I completed an exercise of hers:

Make a list of everything you must not write about. List what you must not write about because:

It is generally not considered important enough from the point of view of literature.
It is too private and therefore trivial from the point of view of literature.
It would embarrass you to speak about it.
It would embarrass or offend your family and associates.
It would embarrass or offend the reader.
It is taboo.

Once the list is complied, she directs you to choose “three or four subjects, images, or experiences that made you the most uneasy or that hold the greatest emotional charge for you. Then momentarily set aside your inhibitions and concerns and attempt poems on these subjects.”

This was a powerful exercise for me because I got to identify ideas, feelings and experiences that I wanted to explore but was afraid to. Over the years I have thought about and reviewed my list, and the things that still haunt me, though I haven’t found a way to write about all of them. I have spent a lot of time trying to understand the craggy, difficult, ugly and painful things that are on my list.

On my list is a very cruel thing that my mother did to me during my childhood. When I write about my mother, I usually keep to subjects that affirm her courage and compassion. But all these years, I have been circling this significantly cruel event trying to find a way to write about it.

Finally, two weeks ago, I was able to sit down and write a poem titled, ‘The Shells of Pink Bodies’ that drew on aspects of my experience.

I knew on a visceral level that this poem was emotionally true and very powerful. Although I have written poems and had a few of them published, I always say that I am an untutored poet. Still, after writing it, I had a strong sense that this poem was one of the best ones (if not the best), I had ever written, in both craft and content.

I met with my writing group recently and the response I received from them, about the poem, was very affirming. One reader was moved to tears. Others told me they were able to touch and investigate their own sadness and despair through my poem.

I probably couldn’t have written that poem 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago. I had to write a lot of terrible unformed, half-baked things. I had to circle this incident on my list, hide from it and try again. I had to look at my list and keep probing.

Someone in my group shared that she wanted to ‘go to that vulnerable place and write from there’, but she was scared.

I told her, I’m scared too. But, my desire to map the painful places and write through them has become stronger (in some moments), than the fear of disapproval. And, Metzger’s exercise helps to remind us that as creators, we get to decide what material is valuable to us, despite what imagined and real critics may say.

I wish I had told her about Deena Metzger’s exercise. I will the next time we meet.

What are you circling? What have you been waiting for years to write about? What would your list look like? What are the things that keep haunting you?

I invite you to set a timer for 10 minutes and try Metzger’s exercise.