Breaking Boundaries and Finding your Voice
The Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize is open for submissions!
For a link to the Prize website, to watch my interview with judge Sarah Williams, or find out more about this month’s online workshop, scroll down to MY OFFERINGS.
Nature can serve as a catalyst for liberation
At least, this has been my experience!
First, I felt nature beckoning me, which came as a longing to walk beside rivers, in forests, across fields. The feelings I imagined this would give me were a perfect combination of peace and freedom, and the more time I spent in nature, the more I began to fill up with these feelings. Eventually, the sensations of peace and freedom were able to shape my life, and I reached a place where the only ‘rules’ I was prepared to live by were those offered by nature, which I feel are more accurately defined as ‘ways’.
When I was chatting with literary agent Sarah Williams, who will be helping judge the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize this year, she talked about how there is a very important place for nature in our lives, that it has the ability to transform us.
Reflecting on this, I have a sense that this transformation can come as a daily shift - a stroll in the park can soothe and settle thoughts, for example. It can also come as something more lasting because of the way nature seems to invite reflection. We move from the tunnel vision of stressful living, to gazing all around us, perhaps noticing how the sun finds its way through the topiary above. In that moment, we might have the realisation we’ve been holding ourselves back. We resolve to move forwards with more courage, perhaps.
Finally, there’s the act of writing about nature, which seems to offer a third opportunity for transformation. There have been many times that an early morning in the forest - where I’ve caught a glimpse of a fox slipping through a cluster of bright green ferns, or heard the repetitive clack of a woodpecker - has lead to this. On returning home and capturing my experience on the page, I’ve been able to draw meanings that only revealed themselves through the writing process.
My life, ‘before nature’, was two dimensional. I was denied the daily experience of calm that the natural world offers so generously. I remained stuck in cyclical thinking, lacking the necessary verdant vistas to coax my brain into seeing things differently. And for a long time, my writing felt utterly unsurprising! It was rare I’d watch words appear on the page with a sense of wonder.
No wonder the urge to let my writing, and my life, run wild became so loud it was impossible to deny! I was filled with such a longing to break free from the constraints of conventional rules and expectations, and I knew that nature was the answer. In the realm of writing, as in life, granting ourselves permission to go beyond the norm can lead to remarkable discoveries and unexpected transformations. For me, nature - was the catalyst for such liberation.
Permission to go for it!
Have you given yourself permission to go for it with your writing, or your life?
When I asked Sarah, at the end of our interview, if there was anything else she wanted to share, she told me how she hoped people watching would just give themselves the permission to go for it with regards to their writing.
I know this will make sense to many of you - the idea of finding a state where we can allow ourselves to do or write what we want. Yet, isn’t it interesting we can be born with innate desires, which we hold within us in such a way they need permission to be acted on?
These days, I’m not a fan of forcing or pushing, but in the past I’ve used anger as the impetus for release, or self-expression; a kind of ‘screw you’, rebellious energy that gave me a sense I just didn’t care anymore, and I would do what the damn hell I wanted. The trouble is, this way of approaching life, and creativity, is exhausting. I refer to it as acting from trauma and not truth.
When we act, or create, from trauma, we’re still hurting, held back in some way. It’s the equivalent of throwing yourself at a version of life you’ve been longing to live, but with a broken hip; or deciding to write the book you truly want to write, but without full access to your beautiful, infinite imagination - instead, you’re fishing around in out of date alphabet soup, wondering why your creative process is so slow, or fraught.
The area of permission is connected to the element of fire. We hold this element in our solar plexus, and if our lower elements of earth and water are balanced, then our fire can heat the water, create steam and we allow that steam to pour from us, providing the air and love that powers our words.
Our earth is the container. It connects us to the ground so that we feel safe to go for it. Our inner earth is a pottery bowls that carries our waters, which essentially means our physical body is able to hold our emotions, so that we don’t become overwhelmed, or exhaust ourselves. Without a deep relationship to our earth, we will struggle to tap into our truth.
I’m all for breaking boundaries - I’ve done it myself with the way I live my life, create, and run my business.
I’ve also broken boundaries from a place of trauma, and not surprisingly burnt out as a result.
Now, I’m acting from a place of truth, the idea of permission feels so utterly different. There’s no holding my breath and just launching in, eyes screwed tight, with a sense of anger at the world, and fear at how I might be received.
The kind of permission I’m experiencing now, is more like a sense of effortless, or less effort. It’s an allowing of all nature’s elements within me to just do their work. I’m far less rebel and far more caretaker of myself.
Tended to, my true nature simply is. That’s permission!
Unleashed
To me, this word relates to our voice. It could be the voice we’re using to express ourselves to others, or to tell stories on the page.
When I chatted to Sarah, it didn’t surprise me she mentioned voice as something that catches her attention. I haven’t met an agent yet who hasn’t talked about how important this is. What was new, for me, was how Sarah said that a strong voice in writing wasn’t about confidence.
This makes me think of the first time we remove the lid on a bottle of fizzy water. We hear the gentle hiss of escaping air, which is the drink’s ‘voice’.
This air is within us too. It’s the element connected with our heart. When it’s flowing, it powers the sound we make. The power doesn’t mean the voice is loud, or confident, or booming, or best, it simply means it’s fuelled; it has a source that allows it to work, to express.
For Sarah, voice is something that reflects our personality so that, as the reader, we’re with YOU: as in not with anybody else; not with you trying to be anybody else, but simply with you, your air, your heart, your truth.
What I love about using nature, and her elements, to heal and guide our creative process is that we come to an understanding of true, unleashed expression. We experience that our voice is an allowing (remember that permission) of our body, to hold our emotions, and for the fire within, to warm those emotions to the point they create an impetus, flowing through our heart, into our voice, and out into the world.
As always, wishing you creative contentment.
Gabriela, tree goddess.
MY OFFERINGS
You can access the Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize on my website here. I am SO thrilled with how the page has come out. Never before have I been so in love with my website!
You can watch my interview with Sarah Williams, discussing nature writing and what she will be looking for when it comes to judging the prize here.
You can find out about this month’s workshop where we will be exploring the element of earth through breathwork practices, visualisation exercises and writing prompts here. To grab your 20% discount enter Wild01 at checkout.