The Sweetest Taboo: A Generative Writing Workshop

"If I tell you how I feel
Will you keep bringing out the best in me?"

- Sade

“There are these silences we carry that are our own, societal, and inherited that stop us from writing,” says instructor Arisa White. “The voice in your head comes on and warns, ‘You can’t write that,’ and you are stalled in your expression, anxious you have broken the rules, gone against some controlling force. However, engaging those taboos will ultimately free you creatively.”

During this five-week workshop, your writing will be inspired by five of your own personal taboos—the things you do not write about due to fear of what others may think, of it being too near to your heart, of shame. “Because I believe the fear is more associated with how to write such subjects,” says Arisa, “you will be given strategies for how to craft writing that is emotionally balanced and imagistically rich, strategies that will create an experience for readers to confront their own taboos.

“To guide you through your difficult terrain, so you can arrive at your own stride, I will include directed breathing and movement activities to help situate you in your body before the writing begins. Doing so creates spaciousness from which to resource your creativity and to connect the writing to more than just the mind’s story, but the bodymind’s story. I will lead you through a series of questions to generate writing—questions that approach the subject from unexpected angles and perspectives—in order to foster a fresh way of sensing the experiences you intend to bring to the page.”