What are your obsessions - and how do they show up in your writing?
Welcome back to the writing café - get your favourite mug, fill it with something warm and delicious, take out your notebook and pen and let's get writing.
In my early twenties I went on a poetry writing retreat with The Arvon Foundation in Shropshire, England. On our first night, our poetry tutor asked to write down twenty things that obsess us. She said that she did the same exercise when she was a young writer and when she looks back at her list now, alongside her body of work, she can see how these obsessions run through everything she’s written.
Our obsessions say so much about us, about our experiences and memories and our desires.
The reason she suggested so many - twenty things - was that she wanted to us to think beyond the big, obvious obsessions and, after we’d cleared our throats by writing those down, to get to the more unusual, surprising, sometimes embarrassing, frightening or quirky obsessions.
Here are a few of mine:
1. Water (in any form: the sea, rivers, lakes, the rain, tears…)
2. Mothers and daughters
3. The colour blue
4. Stories of how strangers meet (not just romantically)
5. Found family
6. Belonging
7. Home
8. Trees
9. Houses - the spaces in which we live, whatever form they take
Our bodies, especially ankles
Cats
Childhood
People’s faces
Old age
How the dead live on
Forgiveness
The connections between all things
Our place in the natural world
Extremes in human behaviour
The sound of people’s voices
Pin up your list somewhere you see often. And come back to it every few years to see if you have new obsessions or if some on the original list have waned or grown. Also share your list of obsessions with a writing friend, maybe do the exercise together, and then talk about the various items on the list and what they mean to you. It’s a great way of getting past small talk and sharing something meaningful about our lives and our writing.
It’s also interesting to look at whether your obsessions are connected in some way.
Writing Prompt
Take one of the obsessions from your list and write about it for 10 minutes - no stopping or looking back. Allow yourself to write freely, to write anything that comes up, even if it’s strange or funny or unexpected.
Adapting The Prompt
Take a character you’re working on and list their obsessions. What does this tell you about them and their desires? Have you uncovered anything new that could enrich your story?
Recommendations:
I mentioned The Arvon Foundation in my introduction above. It’s the most wonderful organisation, based in the UK, which runs writing courses for adults and young people. They cover a huge number of genres (poetry, novel writing, playwriting, screenwriting, writing for radio, memoir, graphic novels, writing for children etc.) and provide offerings for both beginning and experienced writers. Many of their tutors are some of the most talented writers writing today. Since the pandemic, some of their classes are available online too and so have become accessible to those who might not be able to get to Old England.
I spent my twenties attending one week retreats or taught courses in some of the most beautiful old houses in the UK, many of them with strong literary associations. I forged my craft through those classes and made some deep friendships. When I became a teacher I also brought my students on one week writing retreats for young people and these weeks spent writing with a group of fifteen young people were some of the best times of my teaching career.
Family, Family by Laurie Frankel
I think I’d read the phone directory (do we still have phone directories?) if Laurie Frankel wrote it. Her novels never disappoint. Her characters are achingly real and loveable and flawed and funny and her stories capture so much of what it means to be alive today. Her writing also has incredible energy.
Family, Family, is about adoption and found family and love and marriage and parenthood and childhood and growing up and being a woman and how hard that is, today, for those of us who love our work and love our children and walk the impossible tightrope of trying to do justice to both.
As part of my series on WRITING FROM FICTION on Instagram, I created a little video on how Frankel brilliantly subverts the reader’s expectations at several points in her novel and how this is a great tool for us to use as writers.
Some Exciting News
I’ve been honoured with the task of delivering the Key Note Speech on the theme of ‘Growth’ at The Derry Author Fest on the 6th of April. I’ll be writing more on the subject in a future newsletter but if you’re in New Hampshire, do consider coming along, it’s a lovely festival with a great line-up. You can register here.
A quotation to chew over:
A nod to the importance of our obsessions - or preoccupations - in forming story ideas, from the 2023 Booker Prize Winner, Paul Lynch:
“I think as a writer what you always look for is a story that cuts the cleanest line through to your preoccupations. Something is set off, and you have to be alert to that, and that’s when you know you have a story or a novel or something that needs to be explored.”
Paul Lynch, author of the Booker Prize Winning, Prophet Song
Thank you, as ever, for reading along, dear friends. It’s been lovely sitting in THE WRITING CAFÉ with you for a while, sharing our thoughts and our writing. If you enjoyed this, do consider re-stacking or sharing.
With love, and keep writing,
Virginia 🤍
Virginia Macgregor is the author of five novels for adults and two for young adults. She has an MFA in Creative Writing with a specialisation in the teaching of writing. She lives with her husband, her three children, her four cats and a home full of books and coffee mugs, in New Hampshire.
Late to your post but I love the idea of listing the obsessions and wish I’d done so earlier in my life. Also love Laurie Frankel! And two (American) friends have had such good experiences with Arvon courses and residencies…
I love the idea of listing out obsessions big and small. Also, you might be interested in this podcast: https://www.authenticobsessions.com/ I was a guest on it and the host interviews artists/writers on their obsessions and the creative process.