What is It?

Canada, 2017

"However it all works, I do think it is.  Making myself go through my paragraphs and all my its, makes me come face to face with myself.  Instead of deleting sentences, paragraphs and words, I ask myself for clarity to go deeper into myself.  Where I seem to lose my storyline, I look for what I am afraid to say and keep writing instead of erasing.  There always seems to be a core there, something of a bit of truth.  When my critic comes out I turn him around and am learning to make him my advocate asking me for a little more truth to my storyline."  –Rick, Writer, ​

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If I am your Writer's Sherpa, or you are in one of my writer's circles, you have heard me ask you "to name the  its."  What typically happens when we write it in a sentence, is we, the writer, know what it is, or what it means while the reader is left out.  Readers may make right assumptions or they may be left confused or literally left out of your meaning.  

Identifying and exploring the its, as you write, will open you up too, just like the writer I quoted above. We may be avoiding some intimacy with our story (and our selves), or we may be lazy as we fill up our pages with its.  

There is something there, behind the it.  Write about that. 
Identify the "its" in your writing and ask what they represent or mean.  Then write the fuller story. 

An "it" can leave the reader out, where a detail will draw the reader into our story. 

It was cold.  How was it cold? Write about that.  Or what was cold?, write about that. 

In our Embodied writing & Living series (every first Wednesday of the month), The Writer & the Métis Healer are inviting you to explore what takes up space in your life. ? Everything from our beliefs and assumptions to relationships and clutter, take up space.  In our writing, "its" take up precious space where a detail or meaningful word could reside.  In January's Embodied Writing & Living session we will explore the space acceptance brings and the difference between our assumptions and projections, and our precious intuition.  Email me if you are not yet on the list: HERE.  

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Canada, 2017