So how do you start? What happens if—as every writer fears—the page remains blank? And how do you get rid of an overcritical inner censor? Heimes, director of the Institute for Creative and Therapeutic Writing in Darmstadt, explains how to overcome inhibitions and open up your inner world.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
If you want to write in order to understand yourself better, what’s the best way to start?
There are writing exercises, for example in so-called fill-in journals, where you directly answer a question. But if I just want to get started without any aids, the best way is to use the method of automatic writing. That means I set myself a short time window, maybe five minutes, in which I write continuously without thinking, without putting down the pen or rereading what I’ve written. The goal is to get thoughts down on paper as unfiltered as possible so that an inner censor can’t switch on—or at least doesn’t get too loud. It helps not to set the goal too high—not to expect too much—but to understand this writing as a time-out, so to speak, or as a kind of warm-up exercise.
Wouldn’t it be helpful to ask yourself specific questions?
If you want to, you can follow programs that, for example, organize specific questions into topics. But that can also be inhibiting at times because such questions primarily get your head working to produce rational answers. Questions often steer thoughts along preconceived paths. Sometimes it is almost easier without them to let the gut lead the way.
What if you just can’t thin
