Creating a Writing Advent

reading and writing as grounded ritual in the season of contemplation

Having an analytic or researcher’s mind, means I am always reading in more than one way at once. I select books I want to read because I am interested in their themes, creating a reading experience that is pleasurable, but also instructive. I always mean to read (again) purely for the joy of it – I miss the unquestioned and pure immersion in fiction that I used to experience - but I haven’t approached books this way for a long time. Honestly, I haven’t tried to*.

Perhaps it’s because I facilitate writing groups now, that I find it very hard to switch off my learning parts. I am always looking for a great example of a book that does x, y or z. Or maybe it’s because writing books is part of my livelihood, such that I am always inclined towards research-gathering – harvesting quotes or themes I might want to build on in my own work. Either way, I enjoy reading this way. For the main part, it deepens my experience of reading. I’ve been doing it for a long time.

This autumn, however, there has been a new dynamic of ritual emerging spontaneously in my, already systematic, reading. In September, I made a slow read of The Radiant Lives of Animals by Linda Hogan as a deliberate discipline of slowing into my travel. I pre-planned a chapter a day, decided the time of day I would read it, and I made notes in response to each chapter as part of my travel journal. This rhythm offers a steady beat to live against when everything around you is new and unfolding at speed.

This month in Regolith Lab, we are doing a communal group read of a book so that we can learn its metaphors, be instructed by its structure, and take inspiration from its built-in questions that serve beautifully as writing prompts. And from today until the near-end of the year, I am embarking on my final major read of the year, which I am layering into a ‘writing advent’ by taking one chapter a day, reading it, and writing a piece in response. The book was published last month and is called Bodies of Sound edited by Irene Revell and Sarah Shin. I am excited about the book because it intersects with my long-standing concern around listening as a major theme of my work, but also with the study I am doing over the next year of so with the College of Sound Healing, to add sound into my therapeutic practice.

I don’t actually need a writing project, of course. I have a new book to be getting into, a zine or three to progress, countless other bits and pieces calling for attention. But something about the invitation I’m making to myself to slow down at the year end, and attend to the subject through the twin practice of reading and writing as deep listening feels good to me. It feels like it won’t be onerous, but somehow reflective and generative. It will create space, rather than take it. The left brain-right brain approach top the project will feel more like the stimulation offered by a walk, than by study.

I don’t have a Christian faith and so advent doesn’t hold particular meaning for me, but I do enjoy paying respect to the rituals in our collective calendar, and becoming curious about how they can be joined and enacted in more secular ways. Advent is a reflective period of time, and tied to the idea of arrival. Of something coming, happening. While I could simply have written something every day for the next 25 days, I do this anyway. Letting the book set the theme means there will be a sense of moving towards something more specific. A narrowing of contemplative focus. When I think of the little windows on an advent calendar I think about the multiple apertures that reveal something more each time, until a whole picture is filled out. This is like reading. It is like writing. The calendar, the reading, the writing: the power of three that threads itself within the Christian practice also, and many other mystical traditions alike.

These are my writing advent principles:

1. Write a short piece every day, of around 100 words. A window-sized fragment. Brevity is the key.

2. Write intuitively – this is not about paraphrasing or revising, but about listening and responding. Right brain, intuitive, response.

3. Opening a window should create air and freedom. We open them to prevent the house from becoming stifling. There are 53 short chapters, which gives me a lot of grace to pick another if one doesn’t resonate.

What might emerge?

My hope is that the process itself is enough. But at the end of advent I will return to what I have written and see what has arrived.

If you would like to join me in your own writing advent, why not set yourself some parameters or principles, choose a book or a theme to explore that interests you, and let me know in the comments or via social media that you’re joining me (@ruthallen.geotherapist on Instagram)

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*I might try to over new year

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