Writing About the Body

See, even a marble statue feels! You have no excuse.
(photo source)

A couple of weeks ago, someone in my workshop turned in an amazing piece about bodily sensation. I'm talking actual, muscles tightening, throat clenching, skin stretching under pressure bodily sensation.


And that got me thinking.


There's plenty going on in my body as I'm sitting here typing this. My fingers are cold. The edge of the table is digging into my forearms. I'm carrying the weight of my arms in my shoulders. I just cracked my neck. The back of my throat feels dry, so maybe I'll take a break and drink some water.


There, dryness remedied. My lips are still wet.


Most of us don't write about the ways our bodies function, move, occupy space before. Oh sure, we've written about fists clenching, teeth grinding, muscles tensing. But we write about bodily sensations in service of the mood of a piece. Fists clenching–determination. Teeth grinding–anger. Muscles tensing–nervousness. We've written metaphorically about bodies–hearts sinking, bursting, breaking, leaping with joy, skipping beats, swelling. If hearts actually did any of that, we'd have some serious medical emergencies on our hands. We might have written literally about bodies if we've written about sex and/or body politics. But that, I'd wager, is a pretty small part of most people's writing.


Bodies can provide endless writing material, because there's SO MUCH going in them all the time. Use an infinitesimal fraction of what's happening, and you could end up with something really interesting:

1. Sit down, for a minute, two minutes, preferably five minutes and write about the bodily sensations you experience. Is there a breeze brushing over the tip of your nose? Is your stomach uncomfortably distended because of that burger, fries and milkshake you ate for lunch? Is your kneecap pressing into the soft flesh of your calf because your legs are crossed? Like any freewrite, don't think. Feel and transcribe. Oh, and if you end up thinking, "This is stupid," think away, but make sure you transcribe how that feels in your body. 

2. Think about a strong emotion that you've experienced. Do not write that emotion down. Instead, write about how your body experienced that emotion. No hearts breaking here. Since you're still alive and reading this post, I doubt your heart actually broke. Think about how you breathed. Think about where you carry tension in your body. Think about how that part of your body felt. Write it all down. You should still be mostly transcribing at this point. 

3. Now, shape what you wrote in Part 2. Use whatever genre(s) you'd like. Make it artful and fancy. Use some of your favorite writing tricks. But let your piece stay rooted in the body.

BONUS: 

See if someone can guess, based on what you've written, what emotion you're writing about.