Writing Better: Enriching Your Writing Process

We are all writers, whether we have published books and articles, or just write letters and emails, send cards or keep a diary.  Yet the writing process, or more specifically, our unique writing process is often a mystery to us. Many of us get stuck and have trouble along the way whether it is generating ideas, writing them down, doing the rewrite, completing and presenting the product to another, or finally getting writing published.

The purpose of this workshop is to help us to understand our unique writing process in order to publish. By exploring Gestalt concepts such as resistance and the cycle of experience, as a participant you will come to understand what inspires you to write, who you write for, which parts of the writing process you do well and which parts can be improved. Of equal importance, you will learn where you get stuck, understand that “stuckness” is primarily a lack of the right type of support, and learn how to generate it.

Writing workshops have been part of GIC’s history for many years.  Initiated 40 years ago by Edwin Nevis, they were facilitated for many years at international conferences and throughout the US by Gordon Wheeler, myself, and later in Europe by Malcolm Parlett and Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb. These efforts resulted in the development of the journal, Gestalt Review, numerous publications of articles and books, making gestalt theory available in many languages and throughout the world. 

Requirements for participation in this workshop: 

• Being involved with a writing project...from an idea to an almost completed publication (article or book).

• Being willing to read and comment on others’ projects

Participants completing this workshop will be able to....

• Describe the gestalt concepts of resistance, and cycle of experience;

• Name personal motivation for writing;

• Identify how they personally experience resistance and the cycle of experience during their writing process; 

• Recognize the concepts  of resistance and the cycle of experience while attending to colleagues’ description of their writing process; 

• Recognize and use support offered by participant colleagues to identify blocks to writing;

• Discuss how feedback is impacting one’s writing process;

• Apply the process learned in this workshop with clients seeking support for professional writing.