Creative Life Writing for Personal Development (CLWPD)

Creative life writing for personal development is a body of practice and literature which has been developing over the past 20 years or so. It is associated with the work, amongst others, of Gillie Bolton (2004), Celia Hunt (1998) and Fiona Sampson (1998). It could be described as the use of fictional autobiographical writing as a means of self-exploration, whether done on one’s own or in a facilitated group in education or health and social care, or in a one-to-one context in some form of

psychotherapy (Hunt & Sampson, 1998, p.201). My own experience of it was through the MA in Creative Writing and Personal Development at Sussex (2008-2009).

The term ‘fictional autobiography’ has been primarily used to describe the kind of writing done in this field, but it is also more recently being referred to as ‘creative life writing’, and I have chosen to use this term. Life writing includes a broader area than autobiographical writing; it encompasses autobiography, letters, diaries, travel

writing, biography and blogs, amongst other forms (Jolly, 2001). I have decided to use the genre of creative life writing (CLW) because, unlike conventional

autobiography or life writing where the writer ‘may not be aware of the extent to which she is fictionalizing, in fictional autobiography she has given herself

permission to fictionalize herself’ (Hunt, 2000, p.12). As Liz Stanley states: ‘there has been ample recognition of the role played by fictions within the apparent facts of autobiography (Stanley, 1992, p.60). However, the writer of creative life writing takes a step further and is not so occupied with the pursuit of factual accounts of the past or present but more interested in expressing personal memories and experiences through feelings and emotions associated with them. Hunt’s distinction between

autobiography or life writing and fictional autobiography or creative life writing is in ‘the relationship between the writer and her words on the page’ (Hunt, 2000, p12). The writer, by giving herself ‘permission to fictionalise herself’, discards the pursuit of factual truth, a truth that Liz Stanley refers to in any case as a ‘creation rather than a representation of self’ (Stanley, 1992, p.60), and instead searches for a ‘personal truth, a felt authenticity’ (Hunt, 2000, p12).

This ‘giving permission to fictionalise’ herself and her experience involves the writer in making a ‘pact’ with herself, that she will ‘allow [her] material to emerge as freely as possible’ (ibid, p.163). This idea of the ‘pact’ comes from Philippe Lejeune’s (1989) work on the existence of an implicit pact in autobiography writing - Le Pacte Autobiographique - between writer and reader, where the writer undertakes to engage in the pursuit of truth as far as she is able. According to Paul John Eakin, Lejeune’s concept of a pact, a contractual genre, was his attempt ‘to establish […] a boundary between factual and fictional modes of discourse’ (Eakin, 1989, p.ix). Lejeune

suggested that the difference between the autobiographical novel and the autobiography was that the former included ‘personal narratives’ as well as ‘impersonal narratives’, i.e. it involved different ‘degrees’ of ‘resemblance’ to the author, whilst the latter, ‘does not include degrees: it is all or nothing (Lejeune, 1989, p.13). For Lejeune, the autobiographer has made a contract with her readers to tell the truth of the self and in her eyes any veering away from the truth betrays the pact. Lejeune does, however, recognise intermediary autobiographical forms where truth and fiction are not so cut-and-dried; he refers to this genre as autofiction. For Lejeune autofiction, like the autobiography, is located in a contractual relationship with the reader, as the fiction is grounded in autobiographical truths. In both autobiography and autofiction the pact conveys the author’s intention to the reader.

Many writers have criticised Lejeune’s notion of the autobiographical pact, and it is this central issue of intentionality that, Eakin argues, ‘will continue to dog Lejeune right up to the present day’ (Eakin, 1989, p.3). Liz Stanley, for example, questions the reliability of the representation of self within the autobiographical genre and

challenges the idea of the author’s utter pursuit of truth: ‘when it comes to the past, memory actually holds the key, for we inevitably remember selectively’ (Stanley, 1992, p.62). In later years Lejeune re-evaluated his concept: ‘I have always reasoned as if the centre of the autobiographical domain was the confession…[in which] there can be no compromise with the truth’ (Lejeune, 1989, p.125). He begins to recognise the muddy waters between the factual and imaginary representations of the self. His reassessment of the pact recognises the relations between the emergence of conscious and unconscious material in a writer’s recollections of experiences and memories, which dismantles the distinction between memory and imagination.

Hunt’s use of the concept of the autobiographical pact introduces the contractual genre into the field of creative life writing for personal development. However, the process of creative life writing shifts the focus of the agreement within the framework of the quest for truth: creative life writers seeking personal development through their writing make a pact with themselves in a quest for personal truth through their

imagination rather than a pact with the reader. There is also a difference between fiction and creative life writing. Whilst both are rooted in writers’ thinking processes and therefore in their influences and experience in the world, whether in actuality or through reading, and both involve writers in letting go and immersing themselves in the chaos of the creative process, the fiction writer may not necessarily be trying to find things out about herself, whereas in creative life writing for personal

development the writer is consciously aware of using fiction and poetry as a way of doing so. Again, intentionality is central.

In fact, Lejeune’s notion of the phantasmatic pact, which he uses in connection with autofiction, comes close to this (Lejeune, 1989, p. 27). As Hunt points out, he uses this term to describe the way autofiction allows the reader to gain insight into the writer through ‘phantasms’ of the author revealed in the text. Similarly in creative life writing for personal development the writer can learn things about herself she did not know from the personal ‘phantasms’ that appear spontaneously on the page (Hunt, 2010, p.234). This can lead to self-growth.

Liz Stanley suggests that ‘fictions may actually hold more truths about the past than a factual account’ (Stanley, 1992, p.64). The fictionalising of our life story allows us to

excavate and explore conscious and unconscious material, memories that have been hidden or previously unavailable. And it is this ‘intertextuality of fiction and

autobiography’ (ibid, p.60) that links my two main research areas together; as Toni Morrison points out: ‘the act of imagination is bound up with memory’ (Morrison, 1995, p.98).

Writers in creative life writing for personal development suggest that fictionalising our memories and experience creates a distance from narratives that shape concepts of self and identity. The creative life writing process allows us to stand outside

ourselves, as if looking through a window and seeing ourselves and our life

experiences on the other side. It is the creative distancing through fiction that helps insight into the self. We recognise that it is us but by standing outside we view our memories from a distance and in doing so create a space for personal memories and experiences to be seen from a different perspective, which allows a new story to emerge. As bell hooks says: ‘Writing the autobiographical narrative enables me to look at my past from a different perspective and to use this knowledge as a means of self-growth and change in a practical way’ (hooks, 1999, p.86).

Audre Lorde, in her memoir Zami, challenges the notion of the absolute truth of the self as she moves away from the idea of autobiography as a factual account of life experiences. Lorde incorporates fiction, mythology and autobiography as a way of exploring her own personal truth of understanding the self. bell hooks also offers valuable insight into her personal experience of writing her life story. She recalls that her memories and recollections ‘came in surreal, dream like style that made me cease to think of them as strictly autobiographical because it seemed that myth, dream and

reality had emerged’ (hooks, 1999, p. 83). hooks refers to memories not evoked by her ‘conscious mind’ but from the ‘unconscious’ that is ‘dark and deep within’ (ibid. p. 86).

One of the important insights emerging out of research into the use of creative life writing for personal development is the way this kind of writing, undertaken in the context of a particular kind of group work or one-to-one relationship, can facilitate a shift away from stuckness in dominant self-concepts and towards a more fluid and flexible sense of self, which often brings with it increased fluidity in thinking processes (Hunt, 2000, 2004, 2010). My research explores how this approach might be applied in group settings in a culturally diverse community in Brighton to see whether it is possible to free up narratives of identity which may have become fixed. Working towards a more fluid relationship with life-held narratives requires us to let go of familiar grounding in our everyday identities and to enter into an imaginative space where conscious and unconscious material can intermingle and be felt in the body. As I will be saying below, the idea of engaging with a bodily felt sense of self is important within creative life writing and also in the story-making in the African diaspora, both of which emphasise that the body cannot be reduced to text and that the body is felt as well as constructed. For example, Honor Ford Smith (1986, 1989, 2005) draws her understanding of the creative process of life stories from the legacy of Caribbean tale-telling which presents emotional and bodily knowledge as essential components to the decolonization process.

In the context of my research where socio-historical events such as colonialism, migration and marginalism have impacted many of the recollections and experiences

of the clients in the hair salon I was particularly interested in Marilyn Chandler’s description of creative life writing as a healing art, a ‘deeply regenerative human activity’(Chandler, 1990, p.3). Chandler’s interest lies in life experiences involving suffering, and she suggests that writers of such events are responding to an ‘impulse to communicate linked with survival itself’ (ibid). She suggests that the impulse to write is a response to the writer’s need ‘to achieve some congruence between inner and outer worlds’ (ibid, p.4) and thereby gain a greater understanding of dominant life-held narratives that shape identity and concepts of self. Chandler says that the act of the imagination involves the writer ‘stretching ordinary language to fit the

unconventional and extraordinary’ (ibid. p.4). She echoes Audre Lorde’s view that the imagination allows us to connect to ‘places of possibility within ourselves’, which is a ‘vital necessity for our existence’ (Lorde, 1984, p.37).

1.3 Winnicott’s Concepts of ‘Holding Environment’, ‘Potential Space’ and ‘Third Area of Experience’

There are a number of key theorists used in the literature on creative writing and personal development who I have found particularly helpful in my research. One of these is object relations theorist D.W. Winnicott, whose concepts of the holding environment, ‘potential space’ and the ‘third area of experience’ have very much influenced my approach.