The magic of hands
In the Imaginative Storm method, we write by hand. Did you know that there are pressure points on the side of the hand that lead to the heart, so as your hand brushes against the paper, you’re stimulating your physical connection to your writing?
In our five-day memoir workshop, yesterday, I set a prompt: to describe someone starting with their hands. Nine extraordinary, powerful, and varied pieces of writing were read out after the 10 minutes of writing. Terry Varner wrote this lovely piece:
Los Manos de Diego
She wants to look at his hands, only his hands. Long, slim — fingers straight. He makes things with them. They are so beautiful as to be distracting. The skin is brown, and smooth.
The delicacy of long slim fingers contrasting with her arthritic, clumsy and crooked ones. The warm brown of his, clashing with the white lumpy veiny ugliness of hers, in this most essential body part.
When he sleeps, his hands move, as if they can't stop making things. These hands, which have quarried stone, poured concrete, cut tile, gripped paint brush handles, swiped cloth across tile to wipe away grout, pounded with hammers, picked screws from a pile, held a power drill vibrating, a sander, a Skill-saw, over and over and over again for almost 60 years.
Yet flawless, those beautiful hands. The hands that cradle hers as he tells her jokes, translating from Spanish so she can understand and laugh with him.
Those hands — flawless, smooth, and immaculate in spite of what they’ve done, where they've come from.
Click here to order Write What You Don’t Know: 10 Steps to Writing with Confidence, Energy, and Flow by Allegra Huston and James Navé, founders of the Imaginative Storm method, or buy it from your favorite online retailer. It’s also available on Kindle and all other e-book platforms.
Our self-paced online video course “Write What You Don’t Know: Imaginative Storm Writer Training” is now available on Teachable. Take advantage of the introductory price!
Follow @imaginativestorm on Instagram for a daily writing prompt, or download May’s list of prompts here. You might also like to explore the extensive archive of visual and audio writing prompts on our YouTube channel. Then, publish what you write on the Imaginative Storm Circle platform! We’d love to read it.