Improving Our “Signals” and “Beings”

"If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!" - Joshua Uebergang

This is a book review of Writing Works: A Resource Handbook for Therapeutic Writing Workshops and Activities edited by Gillie Bolton, Victoria Field, and Kate Thompson.

Writing Works specifically deals with writing in various forms, mostly poetry, for a therapeutic effect of self-awareness. It contains many contributions of exercises and stories from over 40 experts in the fields of psychotherapy, poetry, creative writing, social work, and psychology, put together by the three editors.

The book doesn’t go anywhere near psychoanalysis and analyzing a person’s writing; as it specifically deals with helping people help themselves, and helping you help yourself. Once the writer overcomes the initial hump of getting pen to paper, the writer goes through much powerful exploration. Usually the writer is completely unaware of one’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences until written on paper. This is really the purpose of Writing Works.

Though the majority of the book’s exercises are focused on working in groups, they can be easily done one-on-one or alone. The book is just as applicable to someone interested in self-discovery on their own as opposed to working in a group.

People involved in therapeutic writing will always work with others who have no experience in writing. The book compensates for this well by having simple exercises and the basics of writing poetry. The exercises do not require writing experience. They aren’t about literary brilliance; rather, building self-awareness. As the authors say, “The writer will always write the right thing. It is impossible to get it wrong.”

The first thirty pages provides insight into what you need to do when conducting a writing activity. Confidentiality, building trust, respect, and pacing are all things that need to be considered. In terms of writing processes that are discussed in the remainder of the book, most people, including myself, are a bit weary of writing things like poetry. As a result, plenty of exercises throughout Writing Works are given on how to break the ice and begin trust building for an effectively intimate group that openly participates in all activities.

I really just have two criticisms of the book. Firstly, after the introduction till about half-way through the book, the information could have easily been condensed into one tenth the size. You are given simplistic exercises in each authors’ experiences that seem given to “fill the book”. Exercises seem repetitive as writing exercises are demonstrated under various stimuli like the outdoors, fantasies, or animals. Anyone could come up with these exercises, though they do serve as some good ideas to get your own creative juices flowing.

The second criticism I have is the lack of discussion about the example writings that I was expecting. Writing Works is about knowing how to run activities to help people discover themselves; not analysis. Apart from the interesting discussion on using Carl Jung’s masks in writing for self-discovery, I felt “empty” wanting to explore solutions to people’s problems.

The book does a wonderful job of getting someone to explore themselves through writing, yet don’t expect any deep insights into what is going on. I’m not sure if this is typical in the field of therapeutic writing, though it would seem so if it is all about self-awareness, but one time the authors mentioned that they had one group of ladies together for years doing their activities and making no progress. Perhaps this was encouraged within participants, at times, from loathing in their problems. Nonetheless, I see the power in techniques discussed in this book for self-awareness and personal growth.

Other than those two criticisms of the book, I was moderately pleased. I have no doubt in the power of therapeutic writing and in the authors’ vast knowledge. Writing Works provided me with my first eye opener of therapeutic writing and will enable me to use writing as means of discovering myself and helping other people discover themselves. I still don’t like poetry, but a few other exercises that involve story writing or the unsent letter are brilliant. I now have a great technique for safely expressing emotional steam. You can get your copy from Amazon by clicking here today.

Enjoyed this post? Please leave a donation for me (Joshua Uebergang) so you too can enjoy giving and show me your thanks. You can also signup to my newsletter for more great information.

I'm creator of a highly praised program called "Communication Secrets of Making People Like You". You can read about it here and order it here.