Writing Open the Mind: Tapping the Subconscious to Free the Writing and the Writer

by Andy Couturier

Book Overview

With Writing Open the Mind you can inject a sense of playfulness and possibility into your writing

Powerful writing comes naturally when your mind is energized and experimental, when it can take risks and follow the unexpected. Use the techniques in this book to jump-start your creativity, learn new tricks and expand your writing repertoire.

- Use the surrealist technique of "automatic writing;"
- Play with archetypal imagery...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1569754764
• ISBN13: 9781569754764
• Release Date: September 2005
• Publisher: Bookpack Inc
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.6" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

A 241 page idea book full of creative approaches to the process of writing

Writing Open The Mind: Writing Open The Mind: Tapping The Subconscious To Free The Writing And The Writer is a 241 page idea book full of creative approaches to the process of writing. For both the serious professional writer and the creative personal journalist, Writing Open The Mind could be just what the writing workshop doctor ordered. Quirky, humorous, irreverent, yet filled with practical tips and exercises to jog loose the cobwebs and stopping places of the mind, Writing Open The Mind delivers more valuable writing gold for the miner than many a heftier, loftier tome. Perhaps what works best in Writing Open The Mind is in fact its underlying sense of playfulness. For example, who would you respond to the idea of triggering new 'mindstates' with use of hypnotic scents, lights, and sounds? If this intrigues the writer in you, read chapter four, 'Sway'. How about the notion of resequencing the mind, shuffling the nuggets, splicing things differently? Read chapter three, 'Shatter/Scramble. 'Other mind unblocking approaches include dropping into the deep subconscious, pushing against the boundaries of your work, architectures, prismatics, writing from the kindetic body (or 'Shaking Up the Curmudgeon'), and re-visions, a way to work on writing using the improvisational mind. Author Couturier also suggest working with a writing group, and inventing your own experiments. Couturier deftly quotes a gaggle of creative writing bylines in such a way as to highlight the energy unblocking magic implicit in each one. In the last chapter subsection titled 'The Secret Order of Hermeneutics and the Text of the World' he openly advocates his major agenda: "We write to understand. Thus we should write. But we can never fully understand...Thus we should keep writing (p.234)." He goes on to explain the hermeneutic circle, which is what writers do when they write, attempt to understand and interpret the world. He writes: "When we ask questions in our writing in a way that replicates the complexity of the world, the questions are better questions. That's why the writing experiments here try to replicate the complexity of this very world (p. 235)." Writing Open The Mind is a most enjoyable magician's toolbox of techniques to help the writer improve his/her writing. It deserves to be read at least twice, once for entertainment and once for understanding.

Sheer Genius

There are two kinds of writers--those who are oblivious or ambivalent about the role of the subconscious, and those who have tuned-in. As one of the latter, I believe that Andy Couturier's "Writing Open the Mind" can be a vital, enriching tool for anyone serious or curious about how writers mine their minds. This is not just another "how to write" book. "Writing Open the Mind" is a watershed work on the writing process, thoroughly researched and proven in the laboratory of Couturier's workshops, about how to gain access to our deepest and truest feelings and memories which are often inaccessible, buried under the mountainous tailings of our personal histories and cemented over with psychological defenses. I've been to Andy's workshops and experienced repeatedly the way these exercises can trick the mind into revealing its precious ore. Time and again I was amazed, sometimes shocked, at what ended up on the paper before me after one of Andy's free-write exercises. Sometimes it was stuff I knew was there but could never seem to bring myself to write about. Or names and scenes and rich sensory detail I'd forgotten. And the look on Andy's shining face, the beaming smile, the gleam in his eyes, spoke volumes about his passion for helping writers do exactly what I had just done. I saw that look repeatedly as my classmates accomplished similar feats of creative access. Deep within the subconscious is where a writer's best material resides, and this is where good writers toil diligently, working, as Steinbeck said, "at the impossible". I have two library shelves of books on writing, and Andy Couturier's WOM has taken it's well-deserved place alongside Nat Goldberg's "Writing Down the Bones". (Maybe Andy will do a companion audio tape or video followup?)

Who would have guessed?

Who would have guessed writing could be this much fun and be so fruitful at the same time? Whatever one's excuse for not beginning or continuing to write, Mr. Couturier's book offers more than one way into writing or around the obstacle. This book distinguishes itself by cleverly guiding the reader through a mental maze perhaps previously unfathomable -- without ever being plodding or dense. I chuckle each time I read a portion and then I chuckle more as I discover what I just so gently learned.

Compelling and wise and utterly inspiring

Writing Open the Mind feels more like an invitation to a party of the imagination than a teaching guide. Andy Couturier reminds us that writing isn't an exclusive club for a few anointed geniuses--no pedantry or hushed reverence about the written word here. His goal is to inspire would-be writers to release the inhibitions that breed creaky, predictable prose and to find pleasure and freedom in writing, and he has a gift for doing it. Through playful, inventive exercises and the example of his own boundary-leaping prose, he leads aspiring writers to the places inside where they will find resonant narratives and authentic, original ways of saying what they want to say. His encouragement and his excitement about the written word is infectious, and it does exactly what it's mean to do; it makes you want to dash to the keyboard (or pick up a pen) and write.

Tickle open your mind

Andy Couturier's book made me giggle, scratch my head and go straight to the computer and get to work. I did some of the exercises and I will do more. Mainly, it's Andy's love of words and his ability to construct sentences that make perfect sense while at the same time sing, in a zany kind of way, that I found inspiring. After playing in these pages, you just gotta write something.